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An Ime2-like mitogen-activated protein kinase is involved in cellulase expression in the filamentous fungus Trichoderma reesei

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Abstract

Objectives

Eukaryotic mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) play crucial roles in transducing environmental and developmental signals inside the cell and regulating gene expression, however, the roles of MAPKs remain largely unknown in Trichoderma reesei.

Results

T. reesei ime2 (TrIme2) encodes an Ime2-like MAPK in T. reesei. The deletion of the TrIme2 gene led to 90 % increase in cellulase activity against filter paper during earlier period time of cellulase induction as well as the extracellular protein production. Compared to the parent strain, the transcriptional levels of the three major cellulase genes cbh1,cbh2, egl1 were increased by about 9 times, 4 times, 2 times, respectively, at 8 h after cellulase induction in the ΔTrIme2 mutant. In addition, the disruption of TrIme2 caused over 50 % reduction of the transcript levels of cellulase transcriptional regulators cre1 and xyr1.

Conclusion

TrIme2 functions in regulation of the expression of cellulase gene in T.reesei, and is a good candidate for genetically engineering of T. reesei for higher cellulase production.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Prof. Monika Schmoll (Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH) for kindly providing the T. reesei strain ku70. This work was financially supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (No.2011CB707402), National Natural Science Foundation of China (30970073), and the Knowledge Innovation Program (No. KSCX1-YW-11B3) from Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. State Key Laboratory of Microbial Resources, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, NO. 1 West Beichen Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100101, People’s Republic of China

      Fei Chen, Xiu-Zhen Chen, Xiao-Yun Su, Li-Na Qin, Zhen-Bang Huang, Yong Tao & Zhi-Yang Dong

    2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, People’s Republic of China

      Fei Chen & Zhen-Bang Huang

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    Supporting information

    Supplementary Table 1—The primers used in this study.

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    Fei Chen and Xiu-Zhen Chen contributed equally to this work.

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    Chen, F., Chen, XZ., Su, XY. et al. An Ime2-like mitogen-activated protein kinase is involved in cellulase expression in the filamentous fungus Trichoderma reesei . Biotechnol Lett 37, 2055–2062 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-015-1888-z

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