Improved gene targeting frequency in marine-derived filamentous fungus Aspergillus glaucus by disrupting ligD

Filamentous fungi from the marine environment have shown great potential as cell factories for the production of pharmacologically active metabolites, but extremely low frequency of homologous recombination brings difficulty to further molecular biology studies. To bypass this problem and develop a highly efficient gene targeting system in marine-derived filamentous fungus Aspergillus glaucus, LigD, a homolog of Neurospora crassa Mus-53 which is considered to play a significant role in nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ), was coloned and deleted, and frequency of targeted gene replacement (TGR) increased dramatically from <2% to 85% in comparison with that in the wild type, when containing 1000 bp of homologous flanking sequence. Such results strongly indicate that AgLigD is indeed involved in the repair of NHEJ in A. glaucus and functions in this pathway. Furthermore, the AgLigD-defective mutant has no discernible differences with wild type regarding sensitivity to mutagens and UV, growth characteristics and transformation frequency. The AgligD-deficient transformant, as the first NHEJ-defective mutant in the field of marine-derived filamentous fungus, will help in expediting studies of molecular biology of marine-derived microorganisms.