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Investigation of the metabolome of the ascomycete Annulohypoxylon truncatum led to the identification of novel oxygenated brasilane glycosides and the revision of the stereochemistry of the brasilane A octahydro-1H-indene core scaffold to trans. The bra biosynthetic gene cluster containing five genes (braA–braE) was identified and verified by heterologous expression experiments in Aspergillus oryzae demonstrating that BraC is a multifunctional P450 monooxygenase. In vitro studies of BraB revealed it to be a very rare fungal UDP-GlcNAc dependent N-acetylglucosamine transferase. UDP-glucose is also accepted as a donor, and a broad acceptor substrate tolerance for various primary and secondary alcohols was observed.

The ACE1 and RAP1 genes from the avirulence signalling gene cluster of the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae were expressed in Aspergillus oryzae and M. oryzae itself. Expression of ACE1 alone produced a polyenyl pyrone (magnaporthepyrone), which is regioselectively epoxidised and hydrolysed to give different diols, 6 and 7, in the two host organisms. Analysis of the three introns present in ACE1 determined that A. oryzae does not process intron 2 correctly, while M. oryzae processes all introns correctly in both appressoria and mycelia. Co-expression of ACE1 and RAP1 in A. oryzae produced an amide 8 which is similar to the PKS-NRPS derived backbone of the cytochalasans. Biological testing on rice leaves showed that neither the diols 6 and 7, nor amide 8 was responsible for the observed ACE1 mediated avirulence, however, gene cluster analysis suggests that the true avirulence signalling compound may be a tyrosine-derived cytochalasan compound.