Identification of volatile producing enzymes in higher fungi: Combining analytical and bioinformatic methods

Filamentous fungi harbor the genetic potential for the biosynthesis of several secondary metabolites including various volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Nonetheless, under standard laboratory conditions, many of these VOCs are not formed. Furthermore, little is known about enzymes involved in the production of fungal VOCs. To tap these interesting topics, we developed an approach to identify enzymes putatively involved in the fungal VOC biosynthesis. In this chapter, we highlight different fungal cultivation methods and techniques for the extraction of VOCs, including a method that allows the noninvasive analysis of VOCs. In addition using terpene synthases as an example, it is depicted how enzymes putatively involved in VOC synthesis can be identified by means of bioinformatic approaches. Transcriptomic data of chosen genes combined with volatilome data obtained during different developmental stages is demonstrated as a powerful tool to identify enzymes putatively involved in fungal VOC biosynthesis. Especially with regard to subsequent enzyme characterization, this procedure is a target-oriented way to save time and efforts by considering only the most important enzymes.