Profiling Destruxin Synthesis by Specialist and Generalist Metarhizium Insect Pathogens during Coculture with Plants
Larissa Barelli, Scott W. Behie, Shasha Hu, Michael Bidochka
Abstract
The development of an intimate and beneficial association between fungi and plants requires an exchange of a complex mixture of chemical cues. These compounds are a means of communication, promoting or limiting the interaction, but can have numerous other biological and ecological functions. Determining how the metabolome, or a subset thereof, is linked to plant host preference and colonization has implications for future functional studies and may uncover novel therapeutic compounds whose production is elicited only under cocultivation. In this study, we performed an untargeted metabolomic analysis of plate cocultures with individual plant-fungal pairs. The identification of a major group of fungal metabolites, the destruxins, was examined for their role in plant specificity. The diversity of these metabolites and the production of numerous unidentified, structural analogs are evidence of the sensitivity of the methodology and the potential for future mining of this living data set.