Postharvest lignification is a serious physiological disorder that impairs the edible quality, commercial value and storage life of Pleurotus eryngii. However, the underlying transcriptional regulatory mechanisms of this process remain insufficiently explored. In this study, calcium chloride (CaCl 2 ) was used as a modulator to analyze the patterns of lignin biosynthesis and its transcriptional regulation in postharvest P. eryngii . Results showed that CaCl 2 treatment delayed postharvest lignification and lignin production of P. eryngii by repressing the enzyme activities and gene expression levels associated with lignin biosynthesis during cold storage. Additionally, a heat shock factor PeHSF1 was identified as a nucleus membrane co-localization protein with transcriptional activation activity, whose expression continuously up-regulated with storage time, but was dramatically suppressed by CaCl 2 treatment throughout the storage period. Functional validation through overexpression (OE) and RNA interference (RNAi) techniques in P. eryngii mycelia revealed that PeHSF1 promoted lignin accumulation by up-regulating the expression of related genes and increasing the precursors substances contents. Further protein-DNA interaction assays showed that PeHSF1 directly bound to the promoters of PePAL1 , Pe4CL1 and PeCAD1 to activate their transcription. Collectively, CaCl 2 treatment alleviated postharvest lignification in P. eryngii by suppressing the transcriptional activation of lignin biosynthesis-related genes mediated by PeHSF1.
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Du et al. (2026) studied this question.
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