Global carbon utilization profiles of wild-type, mutant, and transformant strains of Hypocrea jecorina

The ascomycete Hypocrea jecorina (Trichoderma reesei), an industrial producer of cellulases and hemicellulases, can efficiently degrade plant polysaccharides. However, the catabolic pathways for the resulting monomers and their relationship to enzyme induction are not well known. Here we used the Biolog Phenotype MicroArrays technique to evaluate the growth of H. jecorina on 95 carbon sources. For this purpose, we compared several wild-type isolates, mutants producing different amounts of cellulases, and strains transformed with a heterologous antibiotic resistance marker gene. The wild-type isolates and transformed strains had the highest variation in growth patterns on individual carbon sources. The cellulase mutants were relatively similar to their parental strains. Both in the mutant and in the transformed strains, the most significant changes occurred in utilization of xylitol, erythritol, D-sorbitol, D-ribose, D-galactose, L-arabinose, N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, maltotriose, and beta-methyl-glucoside. Increased production of cellulases was negatively correlated with the ability to grow on gamma-aminobutyrate, adonitol, and 2-ketogluconate; and positively correlated with that on d-sorbitol and saccharic acid. The reproducibility, relative simplicity, and high resolution (+/-10% of increase in mycelial density) of the phenotypic microarrays make them a useful tool for the characterization of mutant and transformed strains and for a global analysis of gene function.