Project description:The zygomycete fungi-like Rhizomucor miehei have been extensively exploited for the production of various enzymes. As a thermophilic fungus, R. miehei is capable of growing at temperatures that approach the upper limits for all eukaryotes. In order to study the thermophilic mechanism, the transcriptional profiles of R. miehei CAU432 grown at two different temperatures (at 30°C and 50°C) were investigated by RNA-seq analysis. Approximately 35 million high-quality reads were generated from each library, and 62% reads were uniquely mapped to the genome. A high percentage of reads (67.1%) were mapped to predicted protein-coding genes, while 3.96% reads were distributed in splice junctions, 3.49% reads in antisense transcripts, 2.27% in introns, and 21.9% in other genomic regions. The frequency of reads which mapped to different genes ranged from one to over 300,000. More than 90% of predicted genes (9,680, 93% at 30°C; 9,618, 93.6% at 50°C) were detected with at least one read, while 128 genes and 190 genes were uniquely expressed at 50°C and 30°C, respectively. The results show that 2,117 genes were differently expressed (P<0.001) by the fungus with more than two-fold changes. These genes include 849 up-regulated and 1,268 down-regulated genes in mycelia grown at 50°C. These significantly differently expressed genes include many genes, putatively involved in thermophilic process, such as HSP, chaperones and proteasome.
