Lichens are symbionts of fungi and
algae that produce diverse secondary
metabolites with useful properties. Little is known of lichen natural
product biosynthesis because of the challenges of working with lichenizing
fungi. We describe the first attempt to comprehensively profile the
genetic secondary metabolome of a lichenizing fungus. An Illumina
platform combined with the Antibiotics and Secondary Metabolites Analysis
Shell (FungiSMASH, version 4.0) was used to sequence and annotate
assembled contigs of the fungal partner of <i>Cladonia uncialis</i>. Up to 48 putative gene clusters are described comprising type I
and type III polyketide synthases (PKS), nonribosomal peptide synthetases
(NRPS), hybrid PKS-NRPS, and terpene synthases. The number of gene
clusters revealed by this work dwarfs the number of known secondary
metabolites from <i>C. uncialis</i>, suggesting that lichenizing
fungi have an unexplored biosynthetic potential
