Beauveria bassiana (B. bassiana) is a famous entomopathogenic fungus that could parasitize on hundreds of insect species, which are being used as an environmentally friendly mycoinsecticide. Nevertheless, the possible effect of genetic diversity of these B. bassiana isolates from different hosts on virulence has not been explored before. In order to explore that issue, we compared the genome sequences among seventeen B. bassiana isolates from 17 different insects using whole genome re-sequencing, with B. bassiana strain ARSEF 2860 as the reference genome. There were a total of 10,098 missense mutated genes, 720 positively selected genes were identified in 17 strains of B. bassiana. Among these, two genes with high frequency mutations encode the toxin-producing non-ribosomal peptide synthase (NRPS) protein. Seven genes undergoing positive selection were enriched in the two-component signaling pathway that is known to regulate the fungal toxicity. In addition, the domain changes of three positively selected genes are also directly related to the virulence plasticity. Besides, the functional categorization of mutated genes showed that most of them involved in the biological functions of toxic proteins involved in. Based on our data, our results indicate that several mutated genes and positively selected genes may underpin virulence of B. bassiana towards hosts during infection process, which provide an insight into the potential effects of natural variation on the virulence of B. bassiana, which will be useful in screening out potential virulence factors in B. bassiana.

中文翻译：

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比较基因组学研究了来自不同宿主的17种球孢白僵菌分离株的遗传多样性对毒力的影响。

球孢白僵菌（B. bassiana）是一种著名的致病真菌，可寄生于数百种昆虫中，这些昆虫被用作环保的杀真菌剂。然而，以前从未研究过来自不同宿主的这些球孢巴斯德分离株的遗传多样性对毒力的可能影响。为了探讨该问题，我们使用全芽孢杆菌菌株ARSEF 2860作为参考基因组，使用全基因组重新测序比较了来自17种不同昆虫的17种芽孢杆菌的分离基因组序列。共有10,098个错义突变基因，在17个球孢杆菌中鉴定出720个阳性选择基因。其中，两个具有高频率突变的基因编码产生毒素的非核糖体肽合酶（NRPS）蛋白。经历正向选择的七个基因富含已知调节真菌毒性的双组分信号传导途径。此外，三个阳性选择基因的结构域变化也直接与毒力可塑性有关。此外，突变基因的功能分类表明它们大多数与所涉及的毒性蛋白的生物学功能有关。根据我们的数据，我们的结果表明，在突变期间，几个突变基因和阳性选择的基因可能会增强球孢杆菌对宿主的毒力。感染过程，可深入了解自然变异对球孢杆菌的毒力的潜在影响，这将有助于筛选出球孢杆菌的潜在毒力因子。