Abstract
Selectable markers constitute essential genetic tools in fungal transformation. Markers find increased application with the availability of complete genome sequences of many Aspergilli. Fungal selection markers may confer resistance to antibiotics or antimetabolites, provide nutritional growth advantages or allow direct visual selection of transformed cells. While many of them are already described for Aspergillus, additional markers continue to be sought and developed. The choice of a marker depends on several considerations like the compactness of the marker gene, tightness of selection, background growth, species specificity, and the cost of selection media. Reuse of markers is a concern as transformations in Aspergillus are integrative. Either bidirectional markers or genome manipulation strategies are resorted to reuse/rescue the marker. The range of selection markers available for Aspergillus transformation and different strategies to exploit them are described here. Three markers developed for A. niger transformation, bar, agaA, and sC are highlighted.
Keywords
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge Department of Biotechnology, Government of India (DBT); Board of Research in Nuclear Science—Department of Atomic Energy (BRNS-DAE), Government of India and New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (NMITLI-CSIR), India for funding this research. We also thank Bayer Crop-Science for providing technical grade PPT (glufosinate ammonium).
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Dave, K., Prabha, V.L., Ahuja, M., Dave, K., Tejaswini, S., Punekar, N.S. (2015). Expanding the Repertoire of Selectable Markers for Aspergillus Transformation. In: van den Berg, M., Maruthachalam, K. (eds) Genetic Transformation Systems in Fungi, Volume 2. Fungal Biology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10503-1_11
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