The Fusarium incarnatum–equiseti species complex (FIESC) comprises 33 phylogenetically distinct species that have been recovered from diverse biological sources, but have been most often isolated from agricultural plants and soils. Collectively, members of FIESC can produce diverse mycotoxins. However, because the species diversity of FIESC has been recognized only recently, the potential of species to cause mycotoxin contamination of crop plants is unclear. In this study, therefore, we used comparative genomics to investigate the distribution of and variation in genes and gene clusters responsible for the synthesis of mycotoxins and other secondary metabolites (SMs) in FIESC.  Results suggest that although the portion of the genome devoted to SM biosynthesis has remained similar during the evolutionary diversification of FIESC, the ability to produce SMs could be affected by the different distribution of related functional and complete gene clusters.

Authors: Alessandra Villani, Robert H. Proctor, Hye-Seon Kim, Daren W. Brown, Antonio F. Logrieco, Maria Teresa Amatulli, Antonio Moretti, Antonia Susca
Repository: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6480918/
Keywords: Fusarium incarnatum-equiseti species complex, Comparative genome analyses, Secondary metabolite genes, Phylogeny, Horizontal gene transfer-
Published: 24/04/2019

This work has received funding form the  the EU’s H2020 research and innovation programme under GA No 678781- MycoKey. CC-BY license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/