A transcriptomic analysis of Neurospora crassa using five major crop residues and the novel role of the sporulation regulator rca-1 in lignocellulase production

Comparative transcriptional profiling of N. crassa grown on five major crop straws of China (barley, corn, rice, soybean and wheat straws) revealed a highly overlapping group of 430 genes, the Biomass commonly Induced Core Set (BICS). A large proportion of induced carbohydrate-active-enzyme (CAZy) genes (82 out of 113) were also conserved across the five plant straws. Excluding 178 genes within the BICS that were also up-regulated under no-carbon conditions, the remaining 252 genes were defined as the Biomass Regulon (BR). Interestingly, 88 genes were only induced by plant biomass and not by three individual polysaccharides (Avicel, xylan, and pectin); these were denoted as the Biomass Unique Set (BUS). Deletion of one BUS gene, the transcriptional regulator rca-1, significantly improved lignocellulase production using plant biomass as the sole carbon source, possibly functioning via de-repression of the regulator clr-2. Thus, this result suggests that rca-1 is a potential engineering target for biorefineries, especially for plant biomass direct microbial conversion processes. Conidia of Neurospora crass wild type were inoculated at 10^6 conidia/mL into 100 mL 1×Vogel’s salts with 2% (w/w) ground crop straws, barley straw, corn straw, rice straw, soybean straw and wheat straw respectively for 30 h or 2% sucrose for 16 h. Then, mycelia were harvested through filtration and immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen.Total RNA from frozen sample was isolated with TRIzol reagent (Invitrogen) and further treated with DNase I (RNeasy Mini Kit, QIAGEN). The qualified RNA was prepared with standard protocol from Shenzhen BGI (China) and sequenced on the Illumina HiSeqTM 2000 platform.