2011•Genome biologyOpen access
Comparative genome sequence analysis underscores mycoparasitism as the ancestral life style of Trichoderma
Christian P. Kubicek, Alfredo Herrera‐Estrella, Verena Seidl‐Seiboth, Diego Martinez, Irina S. Druzhinina, Michael R. Thon, Susanne Zeilinger, Sergio Casas‐Flores, Benjamin A. Horwitz, Prasun K. Mukherjee, Mala Mukherjee, László Kredics, Luis David Alcaraz, Andrea Aerts, Zsuzsanna Antal, Lea Atanasova, Mayte Guadalupe Cervantes-Badillo, Jean F. Challacombe, Olga Chertkov, Kevin McCluskey, Fanny Coulpier, Nandan Deshpande, Hans von Döhren, Daniel J. Ebbole, Edgardo Ulises Esquivel‐Naranjo, Erzsébet Fekete, Michel Flipphi, Fabian Glaser, Elida Yazmín Gómez-Rodríguez, Sabine Gruber, Cliff Han, Bernard Henrissat, Rosa Hermosa, Miguel Ángel Hernández‐Oñate, Levente Karaffa, Idit Kosti, Stéphane Le Crom, Erika Lindquist, Susan Lucas, Mette Lübeck, Peter Stephensen Lübeck, Antoine Margeot, Benjamin Metz, Monica Misra, Helena Nevalainen, Markus Omann, Nicolle H. Packer, Giancarlo Perrone, Edith Elena Uresti‐Rivera, Asaf Salamov, Monika Schmoll, Bernhard Seiboth, Harris Shapiro, Serenella A. Sukno, Juan Antonio Tamayo‐Ramos, Doris Tisch, Aric Wiest, Heather H. Wilkinson, Michael Zhang, Pedro M. Coutinho, Charles M. Kenerley, Enrique Monte, Scott Baker, Igor V. Grigoriev
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Mycoparasitism, a lifestyle where one fungus is parasitic on another fungus, has special relevance when the prey is a plant pathogen, providing a strategy for biological control of pests for plant protection. Probably, the most studied biocontrol agents are species of the genus Hypocrea/Trichoderma. RESULTS: Here we report an analysis of the genome sequences of the two biocontrol species Trichoderma atroviride (teleomorph Hypocrea atroviridis) and Trichoderma virens (formerly Gliocladium virens, teleomorph Hypocrea virens), and a comparison with Trichoderma reesei (teleomorph Hypocrea jecorina). These three Trichoderma species display a remarkable conservation of gene order (78 to 96%), and a lack of active mobile elements probably due to repeat-induced point mutation. Several gene families are expanded in the two mycoparasitic species relative to T. reesei or other ascomycetes, and are overrepresented in non-syntenic genome regions. A phylogenetic analysis shows that T. reesei and T. virens are derived relative to T. atroviride. The mycoparasitism-specific genes thus arose in a common Trichoderma ancestor but were subsequently lost in T. reesei. CONCLUSIONS: The data offer a better understanding of mycoparasitism, and thus enforce the development of improved biocontrol strains for efficient and environmentally friendly protection of plants.