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Abstract Although polar fungi Pseudogymnoascus spp. are known to produce specialized metabolites (SMs) with wide-ranging potential for the pharmaceuticals industry, there is limited knowledge on the biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) involved. Therefore, this study aims to search for BGCs based on the whole-genome sequences (WGSs) of Antarctic Pseudogymnoascus griseus (strain AKSP4) and Arctic Pseudogymnoascus australis (strain HNDR4) that were sequenced with the Illumina NovaSeq6000 platform and assembled de novo . The genome size produced for P . griseus (strain AKSP4) was 35.6 Mb with 2172 contigs, whereas the genome size produced for P. australis (strain HNDR4) was 32.0 Mb with 586 contigs. Totals of 58 and 51 BGC regions were predicted for P . griseus (strain AKSP4) and P. australis (strain HNDR4), respectively. Four putative regions were found to be similar to those of choline, swainsonine, trichobrasilenol and geodin, which have antibacterial, anticancer and insecticidal activities that are valuable for the biotechnological industry. The BGCs reported here could potentially help narrow down the gene regions to be investigated for the characterized SMs of interest and elucidate their biosynthetic pathways. Furthermore, the WGSs produced provide useful reference genomes for assembling other polar Pseudogymnoascus strains. The present study is the first to report the occurrence of P. australis within the Arctic region. Overall, this study highlights the potential of polar fungi and their genomic information as sources for novel compounds in the biotechnological industry.
Lee et al. (Mon,) studied this question.