Microevolution in the pansecondary metabolome of Aspergillus flavus and its potential macroevolutionary implications for filamentous fungi.

ABSTRACT: Fungi produce a wealth of pharmacologically bioactive secondary metabolites (SMs) from biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). It is common practice for drug discovery efforts to treat species' secondary metabolomes as being well represented by a single or a small number of representative genomes. However, this approach misses the possibility that intraspecific population dynamics, such as adaptation to environmental conditions or local microbiomes, may harbor novel BGCs that contribute to the overall niche breadth of species. Using 94 isolates of Aspergillus flavus, a cosmopolitan model fungus, sampled from seven states in the United States, we dereplicate 7,821 BGCs into 92 unique BGCs. We find that more than 25% of pangenomic BGCs show population-specific patterns of presence/absence

SUBMITTER: Drott MT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8166093 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature