Fungal Biotechnology

Fungi are fundamental sources of a variety of products, including chemicals, foods and beverages. Some fungi, such as Aspergillus nidulans and Ganodorma lucidum, also have the ability to convert organic material into a diverse range of high-value secondary metabolites, which provide promising opportunities for tackling urgent challenges in human health. Secondary metabolites from filamentous fungi and mushroom-forming fungi are an important source of drug precursors, and gaining an understanding of the molecular mechanisms that regulate these metabolic processes is important and timely for the discovery of new drugs with special biological activities and novel structures, particularly in the current healthcare climate of newly evolving diseases.
Comprehending these native fungal metabolic pathways, and enhancing them through genome editing and genetic operating systems, such as genome mining, as well utilizing systems biology and synthetic biology approaches, is key to fungal drug development. This Topic aims to highlight native fungal metabolic characteristics and pathways, and evaluate recent findings on the use of genetic engineering, systems biology and synthetic biology approaches in the production of fungal-derived drugs and drug precursors.
This research topic will accept manuscript of the article types Original Research, Reviews, Mini Reviews and Perspectives relevant to the theme of fungal metabolism and biotechnology for the production of high-value metabolites and drug precursors. The themes include, but are not limited to:
• Understanding fungal molecular basis and gene regulatory mechanisms
• Understanding the interaction between fungi and other microorganisms
• Developing improved genetic tools and genetic breeding in filamentous fungi and mushroom-forming fungi
• Fungal genome mining, secondary metabolites and discovery of relevant functional genes and clusters