Reconstruction and analysis genome-scale metabolic model of thermophilic fungus Myceliophthora thermophila

Myceliophthora thermophila is a thermophilic fungus with great biotechnological characteristics for industrial applications, which can degrade and utilize all major polysaccharides in plant biomass. Nowadays, it has been developing into a platform for production of enzyme, commodity chemicals and biofuels. Therefore, an accurate genome-scale metabolic model would be an accelerator for this fungus becoming a universal chassis for biomanufacturing. Here we present a genome-scale metabolic model for M. thermophila constructed using an auto-generating pipeline with consequent thorough manual curation. Temperature plays a basic and critical role for the microbe growth. we are particularly interested in the genome wide response at metabolic layer of M. thermophilia as it is a thermophlic fungus. To study the effects of temperature on metabolic characteristics of M. thermophila growth, the fungus was cultivated under different temperature. The metabolic rearrangement predicted using context-specific GEMs integrating transcriptome data.The developed model provides new insights into thermophilic fungi metabolism and highlights model-driven strain design to improve biotechnological applications of this thermophilic lignocellulosic fungus. The experiments were performed in 50 mL medium inoculated with 1×10^6 spores per milliliter in 250 mL Erlenmeyer flask shaken at 150 rpm. The minimal medium (per liter) contained 30 g glucose, 3 g NaNO3, 1 g K2HPO4, 0.5 g MgSO4•7H2O, 1 mL biotin (0.1 g/L), 1 mL trace elements solution (Vogel's salts) and adjusted to a pH of 6.0. The culture was incubated at 35 °C, 40°C, 45 °C and 50 °C, respectively.