Genomic analyses of two Italian oyster mushroom Pleurotus pulmonarius strains.

Guillermo Vidal-Diez De Ulzurrun,Yi-Yun Lee,Jason E Stajich,Erich M Schwarz,Yen-Ping Hsueh,J Dunlap

doi:10.1093/g3journal/jkaa007

Abstract

Pleurotus mushrooms are among the most cultivated fungi in the world and are highly valuable for food, medicine, and biotechnology industries. Furthermore, Pleurotus species are carnivorous fungi; they can rapidly paralyze and kill nematodes when nutrient-deprived. The predator–prey interactions between Pleurotus and nematodes are still widely unexplored. Moreover, the molecular mechanisms and the genes involved in the carnivorous behavior of Pleurotus mushrooms remain a mystery. We are attempting to understand the interactions between Pleurotus mushrooms and their nematode prey through genetic and genomic analyses. Two single spores (ss2 and ss5) isolated from a fruiting body of Pleurotus pulmonarius exhibited significant differences in growth and toxicity against nematodes. Thus, using PacBio long reads, we assembled and annotated two high-quality genomes for these two isolates of P. pulmonarius. Each of these assemblies contains 23 scaffolds, including 6 (ss2) and 8 (ss5) telomere-to-telomere scaffolds, and they are among the most complete assembled genomes of the Pleurotus species. Comparative analyses identified the genomic differences between the two P. pulmonarius strains. In sum, this work provides a genomic resource that will be invaluable for better understanding the Italian oyster mushroom P. pulmonarius.

Highlights

Pleurotus mushrooms are among the most cultivated and consumed edible fungi in the world (Gregori et al 2007; Yin et al 2014)
Through this report we provide genomic comparisons between the two assemblies, identifying highly dissimilar regions that might contribute to their observed phenotypic differences
We further discovered that ss2 and ss5 exhibited differences in toxicity towards the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans

Summary

Introduction

Pleurotus mushrooms are among the most cultivated and consumed edible fungi in the world (Gregori et al 2007; Yin et al 2014). While most fungi are difficult to cultivate, Pleurotus can be grown commercially to high yield (Banik and Nandi 2004) In addition to their nutritional value, these mushrooms are a natural source of prebiotics (Aida et al 2009) and antioxidants (Khatun et al 2015), and are of great interest to the food industry. P. pulmonarius exhibits anti-inflammatory (Smiderle et al 2008; Nguyen et al.2016), analgesic and antitumor activity (Zhang et al 2007) This fungus has shown its potential in bioremediation since it is able to degrade contaminants such as aromatic pollutants (Rodríguez et al 2004) and biocides (Law et al 2003). This fungus can produce useful enzymes even while degrading waste products (Inácio et al 2015)

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Results

Conclusion