Sucrose-nonfermenting 1 kinase activates histone acetylase GCN5 to promote cellulase production in Trichoderma

Trichoderma serves as the primary producer of cellulases and hemicellulases in industrial settings as it readily secretes a variety of cellulolytic enzymes. The protein kinase SNF1 (sucrose-nonfermenting 1) can enable cells to adapt to changes in carbon metabolism by phosphorylating key rate-limiting enzymes involved in the maintenance of energy homeostasis and carbon metabolism within cells. Histone acetylation is an important epigenetic regulatory mechanism that influences physiological and biochemical processes. GCN5 is a representative histone acetylase involved in promoter chromatin remodeling and associated transcriptional activation. Here, the TvSNF1 and TvGCN5 genes were identified in Trichoderma viride Tv-1511, which exhibits promising activity with respect to its ability to produce cellulolytic enzymes for biological transformation. The SNF1-mediated activation of the histone acetyltransferase GCN5 was herein found to promote cellulase production in T. viride Tv-1511 via facilitating changes in histone acetylation. These results demonstrated that cellulolytic enzyme activity and the expression of genes encoding cellulases and transcriptional activators were clearly enhanced in T. viride Tv-1511 mutants in which TvSNF1 and TvGCN5 were overexpressed, with concomitant changes in histone H3 acetylation levels associated with these genes. GCN5 was also found to be directly recruited to promoter regions to alter histone acetylation, while SNF1 functioned upstream as a transcriptional activator that promotes GCN5 upregulation at the mRNA and protein levels in the context of cellulase induction in T. viride Tv-1511. These findings underscore the important role that this SNF1-GCN5 cascade plays in regulating cellulase production in T. viride Tv-1511 by promoting altered histone acetylation, offering a theoretical basis for the optimization of T. viride in the context of industrial cellulolytic enzyme production. KEY POINTS: • SNF1 kinase and GCN5 acetylase promoted cellulase production in Trichoderma by increasing the expression of genes encoding cellulases and transcriptional activators • SNF1 and GCN5 promoted cellulase production by driving H3ac modifications, and GCN5 directly band to the promoter regions to catalyze distinct H3ac modifications • SNF1 acts upstream of GCN5 as a transcriptional activator in the cellulase production of Trichoderma.