Armillaria gallica is a facultative parasitic fungus which is the only nutrient source of Gastrodia elata during its cultivation.Chitinase,as a glycosidic hydrolytic enzyme,plays an important role in the growth,development,stress tolerance and symbiotic signal transduction of A. gallica. There were 22 chitinase genes in A. gallica. Bioinformatics analysis of amino acid sequence of these chitinase genes revealed that 12 chitinase genes contained glycosidase 18 family( GH18) domain. Chitinase amino acid sequences of A. gallica,A. ostoyae,G. elata,Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Trichoderma harzianum were analyzed byclustering trees,so as to further predict the gene function of chitinase in A. gallica. Induction of A. gallica branching with strigolactone analogue GR24,high-throughput sequencing technology based on the induction of branch group( MHJ1),uninduced branch group( MHJ2) and blank control group( MHJ3) is used to detect the expression quantity,the transcription level data of 22 chitinase genes were obtained and the heat map was generated for expression pattern analysis. It was found that 8 genes may be involved in physiological processes such as A. gallica branching,cell wall degradation and remodeling. In this paper,the function of chitinase gene in A. gallica was just preliminarily analyzed and predicted.
Keywords: Armillaria gallica; bioinformatics analysis; chitinase; expression analysis; strigolactone.