Project description:Agaricus bisporus is a soil-inhabiting fungus which is cultivated for production of white button mushrooms. A disease of A. bisporus has been previously described with a range of disease symptoms (yield loss, pinning delay, cap distortions and cap browning) which has been given collective name of “Mushroom Virus X” (MVX). The causes of this disease are not clear however prior to this research an association was found between the disease and double-stranded RNA molecules in the mushroom fruitbodies. The experiment was designed to examine causes and host responses of the disease causing the Brown Cap symptom in the cultivated mushroom A. bisporus. This microarray experiment was performed before the Agaricus bisporus genome was sequenced. The gene sequences used to design probes were from known and novel A. bisporus sequences and sequences of transcript fragments identified by Suppression Subtractive Hybridization of non-symptomatic and virus-diseased A. bisporus mushroom fruitbodies. The A. bisporus mushroom fruitbodies were grown on composted wheat straw using commercial cultivation procedures. The gene expression comparison was made of RNA isolated from 32 mushroom fruitbodies (Agaricus bisporus) samples: 20 samples from 5 separate virus-infected commercial mushroom farms with crops displaying the brown symptom (4 replicate samples per farm) and 12 samples from a non-infected crop grown at the University of Warwick. The precise composition of the viral load was the subject of this and future research/papers. Abstract of Manuscript submitted to Applied and Environmental Microbiology: Characterizing the viral agents causing brown cap mushroom disease of Agaricus bisporus by Daniel Eastwood, Julian Green, Helen Grogan, and Kerry Burton (Paper #AEM01093-15). The symptoms of viral infections of fungi range from cryptic to severe but there is little knowledge of the factors involved in this transition of fungal/viral interactions. Brown Cap Mushroom Disease of the cultivated Agaricus bisporus is economically important and represents a model system to describe this transition. Differentially expressed transcript fragments between mushrooms showing the symptoms of Brown Cap Mushroom Disease and control white non-infected mushrooms have been identified and sequenced. Ten of these RNA fragments have been found to be up-regulated over a thousand-fold between diseased and non-diseased tissue but are absent from the Agaricus bisporus genome sequence and hybridise to double-stranded RNA’s extracted from diseased tissue. We hypothesize these transcript fragments are viral and represent components of the disease-causing agent, a bipartite virus with similarities to the family Partitiviridae. The virus fragments were found at two distinct levels within infected mushrooms, at raised levels in infected, non-symptomatic, white coloured mushrooms and much greater levels (3,500-87,000 times greater) in infected mushrooms exhibiting brown colouration. In addition, differential screening revealed 9 up-regulated and 32 down-regulated host Agaricus bisporus transcripts. Chromametric analysis was able to distinguish colour differences between non-infected white mushrooms and white infected mushrooms at an early stage of mushroom growth. This method may be the basis for an ‘on-farm’ disease detection assay.
Project description:Agaricus bisporus is a soil-inhabiting fungus which is cultivated for production of white button mushrooms. A disease of A. bisporus has been previously described with a range of disease symptoms (yield loss, pinning delay, cap distortions and cap browning) which has been given collective name of “Mushroom Virus X” (MVX). The causes of this disease are not clear however prior to this research an association was found between the disease and double-stranded RNA molecules in the mushroom fruitbodies. The experiment was designed to examine causes and host responses of the disease causing the Brown Cap symptom in the cultivated mushroom A. bisporus. This microarray experiment was performed before the Agaricus bisporus genome was sequenced. The gene sequences used to design probes were from known and novel A. bisporus sequences and sequences of transcript fragments identified by Suppression Subtractive Hybridization of non-symptomatic and virus-diseased A. bisporus mushroom fruitbodies. The A. bisporus mushroom fruitbodies were grown on composted wheat straw using commercial cultivation procedures. The gene expression comparison was made of RNA isolated from 32 mushroom fruitbodies (Agaricus bisporus) samples: 20 samples from 5 separate virus-infected commercial mushroom farms with crops displaying the brown symptom (4 replicate samples per farm) and 12 samples from a non-infected crop grown at the University of Warwick. The precise composition of the viral load was the subject of this and future research/papers. Abstract of Manuscript submitted to Applied and Environmental Microbiology: Characterizing the viral agents causing brown cap mushroom disease of Agaricus bisporus by Daniel Eastwood, Julian Green, Helen Grogan, and Kerry Burton (Paper #AEM01093-15). The symptoms of viral infections of fungi range from cryptic to severe but there is little knowledge of the factors involved in this transition of fungal/viral interactions. Brown Cap Mushroom Disease of the cultivated Agaricus bisporus is economically important and represents a model system to describe this transition. Differentially expressed transcript fragments between mushrooms showing the symptoms of Brown Cap Mushroom Disease and control white non-infected mushrooms have been identified and sequenced. Ten of these RNA fragments have been found to be up-regulated over a thousand-fold between diseased and non-diseased tissue but are absent from the Agaricus bisporus genome sequence and hybridise to double-stranded RNA’s extracted from diseased tissue. We hypothesize these transcript fragments are viral and represent components of the disease-causing agent, a bipartite virus with similarities to the family Partitiviridae. The virus fragments were found at two distinct levels within infected mushrooms, at raised levels in infected, non-symptomatic, white coloured mushrooms and much greater levels (3,500-87,000 times greater) in infected mushrooms exhibiting brown colouration. In addition, differential screening revealed 9 up-regulated and 32 down-regulated host Agaricus bisporus transcripts. Chromametric analysis was able to distinguish colour differences between non-infected white mushrooms and white infected mushrooms at an early stage of mushroom growth. This method may be the basis for an ‘on-farm’ disease detection assay. A gene expression comparison was made between diseased mushroom displaying the brown cap symptom with characteristic double-strand RNA profiles (banding pattern on gels) and non-symptomatic virus-free mushrooms. In total RNA was isolated from 32 mushroom fruitbody (Agaricus bisporus) samples: 20 samples from 5 separate virus-infected commercial mushroom farms with crops displaying the brown symptom (4 replicate samples per farm) and 12 samples from a non-infected crop grown at the University of Warwick. Commercially-grown mushrooms are produced in “flushes” at approximately weekly intervals. The samples were collected from commercial farms when symptoms were reported to us but these were from different flushes: Farm1 from the 2nd flush; Farm 2 from the 1st flush; Farm 3 from the 3rd flush; Farm 4 from the 1st flush; and Farm 9 from the 1st flush. To allow for comparisons on the basis of Flush Number, the non-infected mushrooms grown at the University of Warwick were sampled from the first, second and third flushes, 4 mushrooms sampled from each flush.
Project description:The common edible mushroom Agaricus bisporus is a basidiomycete that thrives on decaying plant material in the forests and grasslands of North America and Europe. It is adapted to forest litter and contributes to global carbon recycling, degrading cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin in plant biomass to oligomers and monomers. A. bisporus is also an edible mushroom that is widely cultivated and economically important. However, relatively little is known about how A. bisporus grows in this controlled environment and utilizes its substrate. Using transcriptomics and proteomics, we showed that changes in plant biomass degradation by A. bisporus occur throughout its life cycle. Ligninolytic genes were highly expressed during the spawning stage day 16 and had low expression during all the other growth stages which could indicate that lignin is not modified after the spawning stage. Our results also revealed differences in gene expression involved in cellulose and hemicellulose degradation between the first and second flushes. This could partially explain the reduction in the number of mushrooms during the second flush.
Project description:The white button mushroom Agaricus bisporus is the most widely produced edible fungus with a great economical value. Its commercial cultivation process is often performed on wheat straw and animal manure based compost that mainly contains lignocellulosic material as a source of carbon and nutrients for the mushroom production. As a large portion of compost carbohydrates are left unused in the current mushroom cultivation process, the aim of this work was to study wild-type A. bisporus strains for their potential to convert the components that are poorly utilized by the commercial strain A15. Growth profiling suggested different abilities for several A. bisporus strains to use plant biomass derived polysaccharides, as well as to transport and metabolize the corresponding monomeric sugars. Six wild-type isolates with diverse growth profiles were compared for mushroom production to A15 strain in semi-commercial cultivation conditions. Transcriptome and proteome analyses of the three most interesting wild-type strains and A15 indicated that the unrelated A. bisporus strains degrade and convert plant biomass polymers in a highly similar manner. This was also supported by the chemical content of the compost during the mushroom production process. Our study therefore reveals a highly conserved physiology for unrelated strains of this species during growth in compost.
Project description:Utilising a whole genome array, we have investigated the differential expression of genes across different developmental stages in the life cycle of Agaricus bisporus.
Project description:The common edible mushroom Agaricus bisporus is a basidiomycete that thrives on decaying plant material in the forests and grasslands of North America and Europe. It is adapted to forest litter and contributes to global carbon recycling, degrading cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin in plant biomass to oligomers and monomers. A. bisporus is also an edible mushroom that is widely cultivated and economically important. However, relatively little is known about how A. bisporus grows in this controlled environment and utilizes its substrate. Using transcriptomics and proteomics, we showed that changes in plant biomass degradation by A. bisporus occur throughout its life cycle. Ligninolytic genes were highly expressed during the spawning stage day 16 and had low expression during all the other growth stages which could indicate that lignin is not modified after the spawning stage. Our results also revealed differences in gene expression involved in cellulose and hemicellulose degradation between the first and second flushes. This could partially explain the reduction in the number of mushrooms during the second flush. This study compares the gene expression of A. bisporus A15 at different stages of its life cycle using the controlled environment of indoor commercial cultivation. The samples were taken at the spawning stage, primordial stage, first flush, after first flush, second flush and after second flush, respectively