Trametes sanguinea belongs to the polyporaceae family and its fruiting body possesses several benefits. In the current study, Trametes sanguinea ZHSJ (T. sanguinea ZHSJ) isolated from the chestnut tree wood was studied for its whole genome sequence and transcriptome sequence with their annotations. T. sanguinea ZHSJ genome is 41.3243 Mb in length with a total of 135 contigs with N50 contig length 2.8138 Mb. A total of 10886 genes of T. sanguinea ZHSJ were annotated. Further, RNA sequencing and assembly represented 11861 genes, out of these 10,507 genes were annotated with four annotation databases. Moreover, denovo prediction annotation performed by Funannotate represented 12,268 coding genes and simple sequence repeats (SSR) prediction represented total 1,242 SSR and among them 707 were trinucleotide repeat motifs.

Alginate oligosaccharides (AOSs), important plant immunity inducers, are widely used in agriculture because of their important role in the biological control of crop diseases. However, the mechanism by which AOSs induce plant resistance to pathogens is not clear. Here, we report AOS with a degree of polymerization of 2–5, which was obtained by a newly reported enzyme Aly2. AOS treatment exhibited high activity in enhancing resistance to Phytophthora infestans (P. infestans). AOS significantly induced reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation, calcium influx, stomata closure, and callose deposition. The salicylic acid (SA) synthesis-related gene and the defense-related genes were upregulated after AOS treatment. A transcriptome file generated from AOS-treated seedlings verified the SA pathway and suggested the presence of chitin elicitor receptor kinase (CERK). The subsequent results showed that AtCERK1 binds AOS tightly, suggesting that AtCERK1 is responsible for AOS recognition. This study laid a theoretical foundation for the broad application of AOS.

Alginate lyases can fully degrade alginate into various size-defined unsaturated oligosaccharide products by β-elimination. Here, we identified the bifunctional endolytic alginate lyase Aly35 from the marine bacterium Vibrio sp. Strain H204. The enzyme Aly35 is classified into the polysaccharide lyase 7 superfamily and contains two alginate lyase catalytic domains. The relationship and function of the two lyase domains are not well known. Thus, the full-length recombinant enzyme and its truncated proteins Aly35-CD1 (catalytic domain 1), Aly35-CD2 (catalytic domain 2 domain) were constructed. The three enzymes showed similar biochemical characteristics and exhibited temperature and pH stability. Further research showed that Aly35 and Aly35-CD2 can efficiently degrade alginate, polymannuronate (PM) and polyguluronate (PG) into a series of unsaturated oligosaccharides, while Aly35-CD1 exhibits greater PM-degrading activity than that of Aly35-CD2 but can not degraded PG efficiently. The results suggest that the domain (Trp²⁹⁵-His⁵⁸²) is critical for PG-degrading activity, the domain has (Leu⁵³-Lys²⁸⁶) higher PM-degrading activity, both catalytic domains together confer increased alginate (including M-blocks and G blocks)-degrading activity. The enzyme Aly35 and its truncations Aly35-CD1 and Aly35-CD2 will be useful tools for structural analyses and for preparing bioactive oligosaccharides, especially Aly35-CD1 can be used to prepare G unit–rich oligosaccharides from alginate.

Introduction: Chitosan is the product of the natural polysaccharide chitin removing part of the acetyl group, and exhibits various physiological and bioactive functions. Selenium modification has been proved to further enhance the chitosan bioactivities, and has been a hot topic recently. Methods: The present study aimed to investigate the potential inhibitory mechanism of selenium-modified chitosan (SMC) on HepG2 cells through MTT assays, morphological observation, annexin V–FITC/PI double staining, mitochondrial membrane potential determination, cell-cycle detection, Western blotting, and two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE). Results: The results indicated that SMC can induce HepG2 cell apoptosis with the cell cycle arrested in the S and G₂/M phases and gradual disruption of mitochondrial membrane potential, reduce the expression of Bcl2, and improve the expression of Bax, cytochrome C, cleaved caspase 9, and cleaved caspase 3. Also, 2-DE results showed that tubulin α₁ B chain, myosin regulatory light chain 12A, calmodulin, UPF0568 protein chromosome 14 open reading frame 166, and the cytochrome C oxidase subunit 5B of HepG2 cells were downregulated in HepG2 cells after SMC treatment. Discussion: These data suggested that HepG2 cells induced apoptosis after SMC treatment via blocking the cell cycle in the S and G₂/M phases, which might be mediated through the mitochondrial apoptotic pathway. These results could be of benefit to future practical applications of SMC in the food and drug fields.

Trichoderma hamatum (Bonord.) Bainier (T. hamatum) belongs to Hypocreaceae family, Trichoderma genus. Trichoderma spp. are prominently known for their biocontrol activities and plant growth promotion. Hence, T. hamatum also possess several beneficial activities, such as antimicrobial activity, antioxidant activity, insecticidal activity, herbicidal activity, and plant growth promotion; in addition, it holds several other beneficial properties, such as resistance to dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and degradation of DDT by certain enzymes and production of certain polysaccharide-degrading enzymes. Hence, the current review discusses the beneficial properties of T. hamatum and describes the gaps that need to be further considered in future studies, such as T. hamatum’s potentiality against human pathogens and, in contrast, its role as an opportunistic human pathogen. Moreover, there is a need for substantial study on its antiviral and antioxidant activities.