Metabolic Effect of an Exogenous Gene on Transgenic Beauveria bassiana Using Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry-Based Metabolomics

Genetic modification of Beauveria bassiana with the scorpion neurotoxin aaIT gene can distinctly increase its insecticidal activity, whereas the effect of this exogenous gene on the metabolism of B. bassiana is unknown until now. Thus, we investigate the global metabolic profiling of mycelia and conidia of transgenic and wild-type B. bassiana by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). Principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal projection to latent structure discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) reveal clear discrimination of wild-type mycelia and conidia from transgenic mycelia and conidia. The decrease of glycerophospholipids, carnitine, and fatty acids and the increase of oxylipins, glyoxylate, pyruvic acid, acetylcarnitine, fumarate, ergothioneine, and trehalose in transgenic mycelia indicate the enhanced oxidative reactions. In contrast, most metabolites related to oxidative stress are not altered significantly in conidia, which implies that there will be no significant oxidative stress reaction when the aaIT gene is quiescent in cells.