Induction of sexual reproduction and genetic diversity in the cheese fungus Penicillium roqueforti

The emblematic fungus Penicillium roqueforti is used throughout the world as a starter culture in the production of blue-veined cheeses. Like other industrial filamentous fungi, P. roqueforti was thought to lack a sexual cycle. However, an ability to induce recombination is of great economic and fundamental importance, as it would make it possible to transform and improve industrial strains, promoting the creation of novel phenotypes and eliminating the deleterious mutations that accumulate during clonal propagation. We report here, for the first time, the induction of the sexual structures of P. roqueforti — ascogonia, cleistothecia and ascospores. The progeny of the sexual cycle displayed clear evidence of recombination. We also used the recently published genome sequence for this species to develop microsatellite markers for investigating the footprints of recombination and population structure in a large collection of isolates from around the world and from different environments. I...

标志性真菌罗克福青霉（Penicillium roqueforti）作为发酵起始培养物，被全球广泛应用于蓝纹奶酪的生产中。与其他工业丝状真菌类似，此前学界普遍认为罗克福青霉不存在有性生殖周期。然而，能够诱导重组的能力兼具极高的经济价值与基础研究意义：该手段可实现工业菌种的改造与优化，推动新型表型的创制，并清除克隆增殖过程中累积的有害突变。本研究首次成功诱导罗克福青霉的有性生殖结构，包括产囊体（ascogonia）、闭囊壳（cleistothecia）与子囊孢子（ascospores）。该有性周期产生的子代群体展现出明确的重组特征。本研究还利用该物种近期公布的基因组序列，开发了微卫星标记（microsatellite markers），用于分析全球范围内不同环境来源的大量分离菌株的重组痕迹与种群结构。（原文未完）