The Aspmine - comparative genomics analysis of 9 new species of Aspergillus section Sparsi, Ochraceorosei, Tanneri and Rubusti

Tammi Vesth tcve@bio.dtu.dk ¹ Jane Lind Nybo ¹ Sebastian Theobald ¹ Jens Frisvad ¹ Ronald de Vries ⁴ Igor V. Grigoriev ³ Scott E. Baker ² Ellen K. Lyhne ¹ Martin E. Kogle ¹ Asaf Salamov ³ Alan Kuo ³ Robert Riley ³ Matthieu Hainaut ⁵ Mikael R. Andersen ¹

¹Bioengineering, Technical University of Denmark, DTU, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark
²., Joint Bioenergy Institute, Berkley, California, USA
³., Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, California, USA
⁴Fungal Physiology, CBS KNAW Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute, Utrecht, Netherlands
⁵., Architecture et Fonction des Macromolécules Biologiques, Marseille, France

In this work, we present the new whole genome sequences, functional annotation and comparative analysis of 6 filamentous fungi of the Aspergillus genus. The new species belong to the sections of Sparsi (3), Ochraceorosei (1), Tanneri (1) and Rubustii (1).

Species of section Sparsi, A. funiculosus, A. implicatus and A. biplanus are found in warm soil climates and produce antimicrobial compounds and toxins such as kojic acid, auraglaucin, gregatins, funicin and sidins. The section Ochraceorosei (suggested 2009) consists of A. ochraceoroseus and A. rambelii. A. ochraceoroseus, these species produce the mycotoxin aflatoxin B1.

The analysis presented here include genome sequence quality, secondary metabolism potential, carbohydrate degradation potential, shared proteomes and species as well as section specific genes. Comparisons were made to other filamentous fungi, Penicillium (3), Neurospora (1) and Aspergillus (49 species, 32 from section Nigri)

The species of Ochraceorosei have a much smaller number of predicted genes than the other species in the set (7.800-8.200). This is in comparison to some of the Nigri species with up to 18.000 genes. Section Sparsi species have a very wide range of predicted genes (9.000-15.000) while A. tanneri falls in the midrange (13.000). The large range of predicted genes illustrates the large diversity within these species.

Analyzing the CaZyme distribution of the 6 species revealed a diversity comparable to that of section Nigri. In the analysis of secondary metabolism, we find shared and conserved clusters within some sections while other sections have not associated clusters. Unique gene clusters are found in all the newly sequenced genomes, to the same extent as found in the Aspergilli in general.

The six new species provide additional information to the comparative genomics studies of Aspergillus and illustrate the large diversity and application of species in this genus.