Over-production of secondary metabolites by over-expression of the VEA gene

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9428770-B2
Application number	US-201414485985-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 15, 2014
Priority date	Apr 24, 2009
Publication date	Aug 30, 2016
Grant date	Aug 30, 2016

Abstract

The invention provides a general and facile method to obtain secondary metabolites from fungal sources. The invention is based on the discovery that the fungal gene veA and protein encoded thereby regulates the activity of multiple secondary metabolite gene clusters in fungi. Over expression of the gene veA provides increased production of secondary metabolites in engineered cells. In particular, such a method of increasing secondary metabolite production allows the production of improved yields of valuable secondary metabolite products.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of increasing the production of a secondary metabolite in a fungus cell or organism comprising the steps of:
(a) transforming a fungus cell or an organism capable of biosynthesizing a secondary metabolite with a nucleic acid encoding a veA polypeptide comprising the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:116; and
(b) culturing the transformed cell or organism under conditions conducive to production of secondary metabolites, whereby the transformed cell or organism produces more of a secondary metabolite directly or indirectly regulated by VeA as compared to a non-transformed cell or organism.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the fungus cell or an organism is a Acremonium, Fusarium , or Penicillium species.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the Fusarium species is F. graminearum.

4. A method of producing an isolated secondary metabolite comprising the steps of:
(a) transforming a fungus cell or organism with a nucleic acid encoding a veA polypeptide comprising the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:116, wherein the fungus cell or organism is an Acremonium, Fusarium , or Penicillium species;
(b) culturing the transformed cell or organism under conditions conducive to production of a secondary metabolite that the fungus cell or organism is capable of biosynthesizing; and
(c) recovering the secondary metabolite from the cultured, transformed cell or organism in an isolated form.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the Fusarium species is F. graminearum.

Assignees

• Wisconsin Alumni Res Found

Inventors

• Keller Nancy P
• Campen Saori Amaike

Classifications

• C12Q2600/158

  Expression markers · CPC title

• C12Q1/6895

  for plants, fungi or algae · CPC title

• C12N9/20

  Triglyceride splitting, e.g. by means of lipase · CPC title

• C12N15/80

  for fungi · CPC title

• C12R1/645

  Chemistry & Metallurgy · mapped topic