GSE106983
Metabolic regulation of filamentous fungi is tailored for secondary secondary metabolite production
We investigated the metabolism of six secondary metabolite producing fungi of the Penicillium genus, during nutrient depletion in the stationary phase of batch fermentations and assessed conserved metabolic responses across species using genome-wide transcriptional profiling. Coexpression analysis revealed that expression of secondary metabolite biosynthetic genes correlates with expression of genes associated with pathways responsible for generation of precursor metabolites for secondary metabolism. Our results highlight the main metabolic routes for precursor supply of the secondary metabolism during nutrient depletion, and suggests that regulation of fungal metabolism is tailored to meet the demands for secondary metabolite production. These findings can aid in identifying wild type species, which are optimized for production of specific secondary metabolites, and therefore can be utilized as high yielding cell factories. Overall design: Controlled bioreactor fermentations were carried out for six different Penicillium species in defined and complex medium. A sample for transcriptome analysis was collected in the stationary phase several hours after the CO2 exhaust had peaked