bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.09.137125; this version posted June 16, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-ND 4.0 International license. 1 Diversification of fungal chitinases and their functional differentiation in 2 Histoplasma capsulatum 3 4 Kristie D. Goughenour1*, Janice Whalin1, 5 Jason C. Slot2, Chad A. Rappleye1# 6 7 1 Department of Microbiology, Ohio State University 8 2 Department of Plant Pathology, Ohio State University 9 10 11 #corresponding author: 12
[email protected] 13 614-247-2718 14 15 *current affiliation: 16 Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine 17 University of Michigan 18 VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, Research Service 19 Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA 20 21 22 running title: Fungal chitinases 23 24 keywords: chitinase, GH18, fungi, Histoplasma 25 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.09.137125; this version posted June 16, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-ND 4.0 International license. 26 ABSTRACT 27 Chitinases enzymatically hydrolyze chitin, a highly abundant biomolecule with many potential 28 industrial and medical uses in addition to their natural biological roles. Fungi are a rich source of 29 chitinases, however the phylogenetic and functional diversity of fungal chitinases are not well 30 understood.