Key metabolism pathways and regulatory mechanisms of high polysaccharide yielding in Hericium erinaceus

BACKGROUND: Hericium erinaceus, a rare edible and medicine fungus, is widely used in the food and medical field. Polysaccharides from H. erinaceus are the main bioactive compound that exert high bioactive value in the medical and healthcare industries. RESULTS: The genome of H. erinaceus original strain HEA was reported 38.16 Mb, encoding 9780 predicted genes by single-molecule, real-time sequencing technology. The phylogenomic analysis showed that H. erinaceus had the closest evolutionary affinity with Dentipellis sp. The polysaccharide content in the fermented mycelia of mutated strains HEB and HEC, which obtained by ARTP mutagenesis in our previous study, was improved by 23.25 and 47.45%, and a new β-glucan fraction with molecular weight 1.056 × 10(6) Da was produced in HEC. Integrative analysis of transcriptome and proteomics showed the upregulation of the carbohydrate metabolism pathway modules in HEB and HEC might lead to the increased production of glucose-6P and promote the repeating units synthesis of polysaccharides. qPCR and PRM analysis confirmed that most of the co-enriched and differentially co-expressed genes involved in carbohydrate metabolism shared a similar expression trend with the transcriptome and proteome data in HEB and HEC. Heatmap analysis showed a noticeably decreased protein expression profile of the RAS-cAMP-PKA pathway in HEC with a highly increased 47.45% of polysaccharide content. The S phase progression blocking experiment further verified that the RAS-cAMP-PKA pathway’s dysfunction might promote high polysaccharide and β-glucan production in the mutant strain HEC. CONCLUSIONS: The study revealed the primary mechanism of the increased polysaccharide synthesis induced by ARTP mutagenesis and explored the essential genes and pathways of polysaccharide synthesis. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12864-021-07480-x.