Draft Genome Sequence of the Reference Strain of the Korean Medicinal Mushroom Wolfiporia cocos KMCC03342

Mycobiology. 2022 Aug 24;50(4):254-257. doi: 10.1080/12298093.2022.2109874. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Wolfiporia cocos is a wood-decay brown rot fungus belonging to the family Polyporaceae. While the fungus grows, the sclerotium body of the strain, dubbed Bokryeong in Korean, is formed around the roots of conifer trees. The dried sclerotium has been widely used as a key component of many medicinal recipes in East Asia. Wolfiporia cocos strain KMCC03342 is the reference strain registered and maintained by the Korea Seed and Variety Service for commercial uses. Here, we present the first draft genome sequence of W. cocos KMCC03342 using a hybrid assembly technique combining both short- and long-read sequences. The genome has a total length of 55.5 Mb comprised of 343 contigs with N50 of 332 kb and 95.8% BUSCO completeness. The GC ratio was 52.2%. We predicted 14,296 protein-coding gene models based on ab initio gene prediction and evidence-based annotation procedure using RNAseq data. The annotated genome was predicted to have 19 terpene biosynthesis gene clusters, which was the same number as the previously sequenced W. cocos strain MD-104 genome but higher than Chinese W. cocos strains. The genome sequence and the predicted gene clusters allow us to study biosynthetic pathways for the active ingredients of W. cocos.

Keywords: Wolfiporia cocos; secondary metabolite biosynthesis gene cluster; whole genome sequence.

Grants and funding

This study was funded by the Cooperative Research Program for the National Agricultural Genome Program, Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea (project no. PJ01337602) and a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the government of the Republic of Korea (MEST) (grant NRF-2019R1A2C1089704). The authors were supported by Korea University grant.