An efficient visual screening of gene knockout mutants in the insect pathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana.

ABSTRACT: Beauveria bassiana is an entomopathognic fungus, which is widely employed in the biological control of pests. Gene disruption is a common method for studying the functions of genes involved in fungal development or its interactions with hosts. However, generating gene deletion mutants was a time-consuming work. The transcriptional factor OpS3 has been identified as a positive regulator of a red secondary metabolite oosporein in B. bassiana. In this study, we have designed a new screening system by integrating a constitutive OpS3 expression cassette outside one of the homologous arms of target gene. Ectopic transformants predominantly exhibit a red colour with oosporein production, while knockout mutants appear as white colonies due to the loss of the OpS3 expression cassette caused by reco

SUBMITTER: Mao A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11201804 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature