Trichoderma Transformation Methods

Abstract

Trichoderma includes a huge variety of fungal species with an increasing interest from several points of view. Many of their species produce primary or secondary metabolites with importance in pharmaceutical industry or in the biocontrol of significant phytopathogenic fungi (Cardoza et al., Curr Genet 34:50–59, 2005; Sivasithamparam and Ghisalberti, Trichoderma and Gliocladium, London, pp 139–191). Other Trichoderma species produce enzymes with a remarkable industrial importance and even other strains from Trichoderma brevicompactum (Tijerino et al., Fungal Genet Biol 48:285–296, 2011a, Toxins (Basel) 3:1220–1232, 2011b) or Trichoderma longibrachiatum (Alanio et al., Clin Infect Dis 46:e116–118, 2008) have potential pathogenic activity against plants and animals, including human beings, respectively. The practical applications of this genus have resulted in an increasing interest in the development of efficient transformation procedures, in order to select transgenic strains with valuable phenotypes. These procedures should be essential tools to characterize the physiological roles of the increasing number of genes available as a result of the fungal genomic projects (http://genome.jgi-psf.org/programs/fungi) (Grigoriev et al., Nucleic Acids Res 40:D26–32, 2012).