Lifestyles shape genome size and gene content in fungal pathogens

Abstract

Fungi display a wide range of lifestyles and hosts. We still know little about the impact of lifestyles, including pathogenicity, on their genome architecture. Here, we combined and annotated 552 fungal genomes from the class Sordariomycetes and examined the association between 13 genomic and two lifestyle traits: pathogenicity and insect association. We found that pathogens on average tend to have a larger number of protein-coding genes, including effectors, and tRNA genes. In addition, the non-repetitive size of their genomes is larger than that of non-pathogenic species. However, this pattern is not consistent across all groups. Insect endoparasites and symbionts have smaller genome sizes and genes with longer exons; moreover, insect-vectored pathogens possess fewer genes compared to those not transmitted by insects. Our study shows that genes are the main contributors to genome size variation in Sordariomycetes and that pathogens can exhibit distinct genome architectures, depending on their host and vector interactions.