lca-1 regulating conidiation and carotenoid production in Neurospora
脉孢菌lca-1基因调控无性产孢及类胡萝卜素的合成

Carotenoid is an antioxidative pigment providing protection against UV radiation in fungi. Neurospora crassa is one of a few fungi from which genes participate in carotenoid biosynthesis have been characterized. In order to investigate the regulatory mechanisms of carotenoid biosynthesis in N. crassa, we screened mutants for lower carotenoid production and found 6 belonging to this category from 6,087 gene knockout mutants. Among them, a mutant whose corresponding gene was named as lca-1 in this study was further investigated. lca-1 encodes a ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling complex ATPase chain ISW1. lca-1 deletion resulted in a reduction of 88% in conidial production and a decrease of 81% in carotenoid production. qRT-PCR analysis showed that the expression levels of the four genes (al-1, al-2, fl and eas) related to conidiation and carotenoid biosynthesis were reduced. These results suggest that lca-1 positively regulates conidiation and carotenoid biosynthesis in Neurospora.