The high-efficient production of phelligridin LA by Inonotus baumii with an integrated fermentation-separation process

The phelligridin LA was one of the valuable metabolites synthesized by the medicinal fungus Sanghuang in liquid fermentation. In the improvement of PLA productivity by fermentation, we investigated the optimal conditions for the efficient separation of PLA from the fermentation broth with a chromatographic column packed with the macroporous resin ADS-17. Based on the findings, we further developed an integrated bioreactor system that coupled the fermentation and separation of PLA. Fermentation experiments with the bioreactor system testified the performance of our design in fortification of the PLA production: an improvement of PLA production by 2.14 folds was successfully achieved due to the prompt removal of the PLA, while the formation of hyphae biomass was not affected. Also, the integrated system could afford a simultaneous purification of PLA to a purity of 92.95% with a recovery of 84.3%, which was comparable to that of the PLA purified with an additional process (97.53%), at a reasonable recovery. This study provided a feasible approach for the improved production of PLA by fermentation. Besides, the design of the integrated bioreactor system offered a useful reference for the fermentation process development of fungi for the production of diverse valuable metabolites.

Enhanced production of total flavones from Inonotus baumii by multiple strategies

As one kind of important secondary metabolites produced by Inonotus baumii, flavones can be applied in food, medicine, and other industries due to their biological activities such as antioxidant, anticancer, and antibacterial activity. To enhance total flavone production in submerged fermentation of I. baumii, three different strategies, optimization of fermentation parameters by statistical designs including Plackett-Burman design and response surface methodology, addition of precursors and elicitors, and two-phase culture, were used. The production of total flavones (PTF) reached 1532.83 mg/L when the optimized medium was used. All precursors and elicitors can increase the PTF. The maximum PTF (2184.06 mg/L, up to 1.57-fold) was obtained with the addition of both AgNO₃ and glutathione in fermentation media. Interestingly, when 0.5% (w/v) DM130 macroporous resin as adsorbent was added to fermentation broth on day 4 of culture, the highest production reached 2407.79 mg/L with this two-phase culture strategy. These methods can be further applied to large-scale industrial production and broaden the application of flavones.

Cloning and characterization of a novel phenylalanine ammonia-lyase gene from Inonotus baumii

Phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) gene plays an important role in the synthesis of flavones, lignin, and other bioactive compounds in living organisms. Inonotus baumii, the only known flavone-producing filamentous fungus, is of great importance in the investigation of flavone metabolic pathways. To study the function of PAL enzyme in I. baumii flavone synthesis, a full-length cDNA of pal gene was cloned from I. baumii using DOP-PCR and RACE-PCR. The 2502-bp PAL coding region encodes an 833 amino acid protein with an approximate MW of 88.2kDa. Three introns and four exons are present in the DNA sequence of IbPAL. Amino acid sequence alignment showed that IbPAL shares 76% similarity with PALs of Inonotus fungi. The three-dimensional structure of IbPAL showed that it is composed of an MIO domain, a core domain and an inserted shielding domain. On this basis, the IbPAL was expressed and purified using the prokaryotic expression vector pSMART-V with a 6xHis-tag in Escherichia coli, and its enzymatic activity was subsequently detected. Our results will aid in understanding the enzymatic properties of PAL and further confirm the mechanism of flavone synthesis in I. baumii.

De novo transcriptome analysis of Inonotus baumii by RNA-seq

Inonotus baumii, a basidiomycete white rot fungus, has been widely used as traditional herbal medicine in China, Korea, Japan and other Asian countries for many years. Its extract is of great medicinal importance and plays a valuable role in the immune response and disease resistance. However, limited genetic resources for I. baumii have hindered exploration of this species. In order to gain a molecular understanding of this fungus, Illumina high-throughput technology was used to sequence and analyze the transcriptome of I. baumii, and 280,691 contigs, 43,890 scaffolds and 30,051 unigenes were obtained. Additionally, based on similarity search with known proteins, unigenes were annotated with gene descriptions, gene ontology (GO), clusters of orthologous group (COG), and database of protein families (Pfam) terms. According to the annotation of unigenes, a total of 12 candidate genes involved in the triterpenoid biosynthesis pathway and 21 putative FOLymes (fungal oxidative lignin enzymes) and 176 CAZymes (carbohydrate-active enzymes) were obtained using homology-based BlastX. Moreover, for better understanding of the transcripts function, the BlastX algorithm was used to search for homologous sequences against the Yeast genome. This is the first study on transcriptome analyses of I. baumii, which provided a dataset for functional gene mining and laid a basis for further functional genomics studies of I. baumii.