Manipulation of the Global Regulator mcrA Upregulates Secondary Metabolite Production in Aspergillus wentii Using CRISPR-Cas9 with In Vitro Assembled Ribonucleoproteins

Genome sequencing of filamentous fungi has demonstrated that most secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) are silent under standard laboratory conditions. In this work, we have established an in vitro CRISPR-Cas9 system in Aspergillus wentii . To activate otherwise silent BGCs, we deleted the negative transcriptional regulator mcrA . Deletion of mcrA ( mcrA Δ) resulted in differential production of 17 SMs in total when the strain was cultivated on potato dextrose media (PDA). Nine out of fifteen of these SMs were fully characterized, including emodin ( 1 ), physcion ( 2 ), sulochrin ( 3 ), physcion bianthrone ( 4 ), 14- O -demethylsulochrin ( 5 ), ( trans / cis )-emodin bianthrone ( 6 and 7 ), and ( trans / cis )-emodin physcion bianthrone ( 8 and 9 ). These compounds were all found to be produced by the same polyketide synthase (PKS) BGC. We then performed a secondary knockout targeting this PKS cluster in the mcrA Δ background. The metabolite profile of the dual-knockout strain revealed new metabolites that were not previously detected in the mcrA Δ parent strain. Two additional SMs were purified from the dual-knockout strain and were characterized as aspergillus acid B ( 16 ) and a structurally related but previously unidentified compound ( 17 ). For the first time, this work presents a facile genetic system capable of targeted gene editing in A. wentii. This work also illustrates the utility of performing a dual knockout to eliminate major metabolic products, enabling additional SM discovery.