Transcriptome analysis of pathogenic strain of Schizophyllum commune isolated from fish infection. Transcriptome analysis of Schizophyllum commune

Schizophyllum commune is a well known mushroom forming fungi commonly used as edible mushroom because of nutritive property. They exhibit a special wood degrading mechanism to grow in decay matters by releasing a series of enzymes. These enzymes might make them an opportunistic pathogen which has been reported to infect various animals and human beings too. Although these fungi were identified as pathogens, their mechanisms of pathogenesis as well as the key virulence factors involved in disease establishment are not known. In this study, we reported this fungal infection in freshwater fish for the first time and its morphological features were analysed. Further, we employed RNA-seq technique to identify the major virulence factors involved in the pathogenesis in fish and the network of interaction between the identified virulence factors were analysed. Finally, we confirmed the virulence roles of this fungus during infection by qRT-PCR analysis. This study emphasize the virulence nature of the common mushroom forming food fungus and the involvement of enzymes such as phosphoinositide phospholipase C, hexosaminidase and few toxins such as pesticidal and insecticidal crystal proteins which opens new avenue in the virulence nature of edible mushrooms.