Sunday, May 3, 2009
2-26
The model filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa, a great system for studying lignincellulose degradation
Chaoguang Tian1, William Beeson2, Jianping Sun1, Jamie Cate2, and N. Louise Glass1. (1) Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, 111 Koshland Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-3102, (2) Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley
Neurospora crassa is a well-known model organism for studying genetics, biochemistry and fungal biology. In nature, N. crassa grows on dead plant material, particularly members of the grass family and was described as cellulose degrader over 30 years ago. Unlike other filamentous fungi, N. crassa has comprehensive genetics and molecular biology tools and unique functional genomics resources, which include a near full genome deletion strain set and whole genome microarrays. N. crassa can grow on plant cell walls or crystalline cellulose (Avicel) as a sole carbon source. We identified the transcriptome associated with growth of N. crassa over a 10 day time course on ground Miscanthus stems; over 1000 genes increased in relative expression level. When compared to N. crassa transcriptome when grown on crystalline cellulose, an overlap set of 129 genes was identified at an early time point; the functional annotation of these genes showed an enrichment for proteins predicted to be involved in carbohydrate metabolism, but also a significant number of genes/proteins of unknown function. The secretome associated with N. crassa grown on Miscanthus or Avicel was determined by MassSpec analysis; at least 85 proteins were identified. A detailed functional analysis of the strains containing mutations in genes encoding these 85 proteins and subsequent bioechemical analyses is an ongoing study. I will also discuss the identification of regulators that affect cellulase gene expression and plans to explore cellulase synergism, using N. crassa as a model celluloytic fungus.
Web Page: www.energybiosciencesinstitute.org