Abstract
Fungal natural products comprise a wide range of bioactive compounds including important drugs and agrochemicals. Intriguingly, bioinformatic analyses of fungal genomes have revealed that fungi have the potential to produce significantly more natural products than what have been discovered so far. It has thus become widely accepted that most biosynthesis pathways of fungal natural products are silent or expressed at very low levels under laboratory cultivation conditions. To tap into this vast chemical reservoir, the reconstitution of entire biosynthetic pathways in genetically tractable fungal hosts (total heterologous biosynthesis) has become increasingly employed in recent years. This review summarizes total heterologous biosynthesis of fungal natural products accomplished before 2020 using Aspergillus nidulans as heterologous hosts. We review here Aspergillus transformation, A. nidulans hosts, shuttle vectors for episomal expression, and chromosomal integration expression. These tools, collectively, not only facilitate the discovery of cryptic natural products but can also be used to generate high-yield strains with clean metabolite backgrounds. In comparison with total synthesis, total heterologous biosynthesis offers a simplified strategy to construct complex molecules and holds potential for commercial application.