Other fungal cellulases

Another organism used for industrial cellulase production is Humicola insolens, which seems to produce the same set of cellulases as T. reesei except that it produces a family GH-6 en — doglucanase (68). However, these two organisms are not closely related, even though they are both brown rot fungi, which do not degrade lignin. Phanerochaete chrysosporium is a white rot fungus that degrades lignin, while not degrading much cellulose, despite con­taining a set of cellulase genes (69). A surprising finding is that it contains seven CBH I genes that are differentially regulated, in contrast to the single CBH I gene in T. ree — sei. The cellulases produced by Aspergillus aculeatus have been extensively studied, and it produces nine cellulases of which three have been sequenced: Cel7A, Cel12A, and Cel5A. From this limited data, it seems that its cellulases may be similar to those of T. reesei (70). Another fungus whose cellulases have been studied is Talaromyces emersonii, which pro­duces two exocellulases: Cel7A and Cel6A, which have been extensively studied, and several endocellulases of which only Cel5A has been studied (71). Chrysosporium lucknowense cel­lulases also have been studied and seem to resemble those of T. reesei (72). There are many other cellulolytic fungi whose cellulases have had some research including Agaricus bisporus, several Aspergillus species, Aureobasidium pullulans, Cochlibolus carbonum, several Fusar — ium species, several Penicillium species, Pleurotus ostreatus, and Thermoascus aurantiacus, but the total cellulase system has not been determined for any of these organisms at this time. All these aerobic fungi produce a set of individual cellulases; however, an aerobic Chaetomium strain has been reported to produce a large cellulase complex (73). At this time it is not known what cellulases are in the complex and if the complex is assembled using the cohesin-dockerin binding seen in cellulosomes. This system clearly should be studied further.