AUTHOR=Castrillo María Lorena , Bich Gustavo Ángel , Amerio Natalia Soledad , Barengo Marcela Paola , Zapata Pedro Darío , Saparrat Mario Carlos Nazareno , Villalba Laura Lidia 

TITLE=Trichoderma koningiopsis (Hypocreaceae) has the smallest mitogenome of the genus Trichoderma

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology

VOLUME=14

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2023.1141087

DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2023.1141087

ISSN=1664-302X

ABSTRACT=<sec><title>Introduction</title><p>Fungal mitogenomes exhibit remarkable variation in conformation, size, gene content, arrangement and expression, including their intergenic spacers and introns.</p></sec><sec><title>Methods</title><p>The complete mitochondrial genome sequence of the mycoparasitic fungus <italic>Trichoderma koningiopsis</italic> was determined using the Illumina next-generation sequencing technology. We used data from our recent Illumina NGS-based project of <italic>T. koningiopsis</italic> genome sequencing to study its mitochondrial genome. The mitogenome was assembled, annotated, and compared with other fungal mitogenomes.</p></sec><sec><title>Results</title><p><italic>T. koningiopsis</italic> strain POS7 mitogenome is a circular molecule of 27,560 bp long with a GC content of 27.80%. It harbors the whole complement of the 14 conserved mitochondrial protein-coding genes (PCG) such as <italic>atp</italic>6, <italic>atp</italic>8, <italic>atp</italic>9, <italic>cox</italic>1, <italic>cox</italic>2, <italic>cox</italic>3, <italic>cob</italic>, <italic>nad</italic>1, <italic>nad</italic>2, <italic>nad</italic>3, <italic>nad</italic>4, <italic>nad</italic>4L, <italic>nad</italic>5, and <italic>nad</italic>6, also found in the same gene order to other Hypocreales. The mitogenome also contains 26 transfer RNA genes (tRNAs), 5 of them with more than one copy. Other genes also present in the assembled mitochondrial genome are a small rRNA subunit and a large rRNA subunit containing ribosomal protein S3 gene. Despite the small genome size, two introns were detected in the <italic>T. koningiopsis</italic> POS7 mitogenome, one of them in <italic>cox</italic>3 gene and the other in <italic>rnl</italic> gene, accounting 7.34% of this mitogenome with a total size of 2,024 bp. A phylogenetic analysis was done using the 14 PCGs genes of <italic>T. koningiopsis</italic> strain POS7 mitogenome to compare them with those from other fungi of the Subphyla Pezizomycotina and Saccharomycotina. <italic>T. koningiopsis</italic> strain POS7 was clustered together with other representatives of <italic>Trichoderma</italic> lineage, within the Hypocreales group, which is also supported by previous phylogenetic studies based on nuclear markers.</p></sec><sec><title>Discussion</title><p>The mitochondrial genome of <italic>T. koningiopsis</italic> POS7 will allow further investigations into the taxonomy, phylogenetics, conservation genetics, and evolutionary biology of this important genus as well as other closely related species.</p></sec>