Publisher's Synopsis
Light is one of the constant abiotic factors on the planet and practically all living organisms present some type of response to the light stimulus. An important aspect after light reception is the gene modulation; this mechanism involves stimulating or inhibiting the expression of certain genes that, possibly, have the purpose of adaptation to different environmental conditions. In fungi, light response has a very important effect on the genes involved in circadian regulation; in this process, the products of the frq and frh genes regulate the activity of the White-Collar Complex (WCC) in a time-dependent manner.
This phenomenon is widely studied in saprophytic organisms, however; the study of the molecular components and the mechanisms involved in chronobiology and photobiology in entomopathogenic fungi is relatively new. In Metarhizium there are reports of phenotypic effects caused by the light stimulus, including growth in constant light or photoperiod; but there is no complete description of the mechanism that leads to these photo- dependent phenotypic characteristics.
Based on the broad distribution of light response genes in filamentous fungi, we performed a bioinformatic analysis on the sub genomic context of said genes using the software Mauve and RStudio. We found that the light response genes appear to be constant in the genomes analyzed demonstrating a micro-syntenic conservation among the Metarhizium genus, except for the wc2 gene. To better understand the possible transcriptional regulation, we analyzed the promoters of the light response genes searching for putative cis-regulatory elements, finding conserved motifs in all the Metarhiuzm species analyzed; this approach allowed us to identify other possible genes for response to light and circadian control within the genome of this genus.
Finally, we propose different light-dependent mechanisms, in addition to its putative molecular components and the genes involved in these characteristic phenotypes.
