Mycotoxin Biosynthetic Pathways: A Window on the Evolutionary Relationships Among Toxigenic Fungi

Mycotoxin biosynthetic pathway involves many genes which are often clustered and co-expressed in particular conditions. These gene clusters also evolve rapidly and can also be transferred horizontally among species. However, the mechanisms of such mycotoxin cluster origin and assembly still remains a matter of speculation. It has also been studied that the growing number of available genome sequences now enables of predicting novel secondary metabolite clusters and taking a phylogenomic approach to the evolutionary origins of these clusters. The studies on regulatory pathways on control of fungal development and biosynthesis of natural products will open up new broad and exciting fields of applications in which the production of beneficial natural products could be enhanced and the production of those with deleterious effects could be reduced or eliminated.