Development of the genetic and genomic information infrastructure of the filamentous fungi Monascus purpureus GB-01

Monascus purpureus is a kind of filamentous fungus with food experience and an industrial strain GB-01 currently used for the production of red pigment as one of food additives. This strain has a very high pigment productivity and is actually used for the production of Red pigment by companies. The purpose of this project is to elucidate the molecular machinery of pigment synthesis and to make it possible to further improve the pigment productivity and the safety of the products based up on the genetic recombination and genome editing technologies by clarifying the whole genome sequence of this strain.