Members of the genus Aspergillus display a variety of lifestyles, ranging from saprobic to pathogenic on plants and/or animals. Increased genome sequencing of economically important members of the genus permits effective use of “-omics” comparisons between closely related species and strains to identify candidate genes that may contribute to phenotypes of interest, especially relating to pathogenicity. Protein-coding genes were predicted from 216 genomes of 12 Aspergillus species, and the frequencies of various structural aspects (exon count and length, intron count and length, GC content, and codon usage) and functional annotations (InterPro, Gene Ontology, and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes terms) were compared. Using principal component analyses, the three sets of functional annotations for each strain were clustered by species. The species clusters appeared to separate by pathogenicity on plants along the first dimensions, which accounted for over 20% of the variance. More annotations for genes encoding pectinases and secondary metabolite biosynthetic enzymes were assigned to phytopathogenic strains from species such as Aspergillus flavus. In contrast, Aspergillus fumigatus strains, which are pathogenic to animals but not plants, were assigned relatively more terms related to phosphate transferases, and carbohydrate and amino-sugar metabolism. Analyses of publicly available RNA-Seq data indicated that one A. fumigatus protein among 17 amino-sugar processing candidates, a hexokinase, was up-regulated during co-culturing with human immune system cells. Genes encoding hexokinases and other proteins of interest may be subject to future manipulations to further refine understanding of Aspergillus pathogenicity factors.

中文翻译：

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通过注释频率识别候选曲霉菌致病因子

曲霉属的成员表现出多种生活方式，从对植物和/或动物的腐生到致病。增加对经济上重要的属成员的基因组测序，可以有效地利用密切相关的物种和菌株之间的“组学”比较，以确定可能有助于感兴趣的表型的候选基因，特别是与致病性相关的表型。从 12 个曲霉属物种的 216 个基因组中预测了蛋白质编码基因，以及各种结构方面（外显子计数和长度、内含子计数和长度、GC 含量和密码子使用）和功能注释（InterPro、Gene Ontology 和京都）的频率。基因百科全书和基因组术语）进行了比较。使用主成分分析，每个菌株的三组功能注释按物种进行聚类。物种簇似乎按照第一维度对植物的致病性进行分离，这解释了超过 20% 的变异。编码果胶酶和次生代谢物生物合成酶的基因的更多注释被分配给来自黄曲霉等物种的植物病原菌株。相比之下，对动物致病但对植物不致病的烟曲霉菌株被分配了相对较多的与磷酸转移酶、碳水化合物和氨基糖代谢相关的术语。对公开的 RNA-Seq 数据的分析表明，17 种氨基糖加工候选物中的一种烟曲霉蛋白（一种己糖激酶）在与人类免疫系统细胞共培养期间上调。编码己糖激酶和其他感兴趣的蛋白质的基因可能会受到未来的操作，以进一步完善对曲霉致病因子的理解。