Transcriptome analysis of the regulation of natamycin biosynthesis in Streptomyces natalensis HW-2 by fungal elicitor

Abstract Background Natamycin is a polyene macrolide polyketide antibiotics and used in 150 countries as a natural food preservative. Streptomyces natalensis is an important producer. Elicitation had been approved to be an effective method to improve the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites. Fungal elicitor from Penicillium chrysogenum AS 3.5163 showed inductive effect on the biosynthesis of natamycin in S. natalensis HW-2 fermentation. However, regarding the global gene expression of natamycin in response to fungal elicitor is not still reported. Results RNA-Seq analysis showed that there were 1265 differential expression genes (DEGs) at 40 h and 2196 DEGs at 80 h. The fungal elicitor had stronger effects on the transcription level of S. natalensis HW-2 at 80 h than that at 40 h. Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis of DEGs showed significant enrichment in biological processes. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis showed that the fungal elicitor mainly affected the expression levels of some genes about cellular process, metabolism and genetic information, especially in pentose phosphate pathway (PPP), glycolytic pathway (EMP) and tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA). KEGG pathway showed that fungal elicitor had a greater influence on the metabolism of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs). Among them, 23 DEGs associated with BCAAs metabolism were up-regulated or down-regulated. The supplementation experiment with BCAAs confirmed that 0.2 g/L of L-Ile and 0.5 g/L of L-Val increased natamycin yield by 17.6% and 37.8%, respectively. Fungal elicitor also up-regulated the transcriptional levels of most of the enzymes associated with the biosynthesis of natamycin and two important transcription regulators ( pimR and pimM ). To confirm the accuracy of RNA-Seq, the results of qPCR showed that these gene expression levels were in agreement with the transcription changes by RNA-Seq. Conclusion In this study, the change of transcriptional levels in S. natalensis HW-2 under treated with the fungal elicitor was firstly reported. The major finding of our comparative transcriptome analysis is that the fungal elicitor improves the supply of precursor, and alters the expression of natamycin related genes and regulator of secondary metabolism. From our results, we conclude that regulatory alterations are important factors for the enhancement of natamycin.