The Critical Role of Polyketide Synthase Gene On The Swainsonine Biosynthesis in The Fungus Metarhizium Anisopliae

Swainsonine (SW) is the principal toxic ingredient of locoweeds, and is produced by fungi including Metarhizium anisopliae, Slafractonia leguminicola, and Alternaria oxytropis. While the SW biosynthesis pathway of fungi and the catalytic enzyme genes that regulate synthesis are not cleanly. In this study, we used homologous recombination (HR) to knock out and interfere with the polyketide synthase gene (pks) of M. anisopliae to determine its effect on the SW biosynthesis pathway. The concentration of SW was measured in the fermentation broth of M. anisopliae at 1 d, 2 d, 3 d, 4 d, 5 d, 6 d or 7 d using LC-MS. The gene for the pks gene was detected by RT-qPCR. Day 5 of M. anisopliae gave the highest content of SW and the highest expression of the pks gene. To determine the role of the pks gene in the SW biosynthesis pathway of M. anisopliae, we used PEG-mediated homologous recombination (HR) to transform a wild-type strain (WT) with a Benomyl (ben)-resistant fragment to knock out the pks gene producing a mutant-type strain (MT) and used PEG-mediated RNAi to transform a wild-type strain (WT) with a Benomyl (ben)-resistant plasmid to interfere with the pks gene. A complemented-type (CT) strain was produced by adding a complementation vector that contains the geneticin (G418) resistance gene as a marker. The content of SW didn’t detected in MT strain, and returned to the original level in the CT strain, while the content of SW was significantly decreased in RNAi strain. We suggest that mutation and RNAi in the pks gene affect the cell wall formation of M. anisopliae, while the colony diameters, phenotypes, and growth rates did not change significantly, and no obvious changes in other cellular organelles were noted. These results indicate that the pks gene plays a crucial role in the SW biosynthesis of M. anisopliae, which provides an important theoretical basis for illuminating the SW biosynthesis and solving locoism in livestock.