Yap, Hui-Yeng YChooi, Yit-HengFirdaus-Raih, MohdFung, Shin-YeeNg, Szu-TingTan, Chon-SengTan, Nget-Hong2015-12-212015-12-211471-2164http://hdl.handle.net/1885/95147BACKGROUND The sclerotium of Lignosus rhinocerotis (Cooke) Ryvarden or Tiger milk mushroom (Polyporales, Basidiomycota) is a valuable folk medicine for indigenous peoples in Southeast Asia. Despite the increasing interest in this ethnobotanical mushroom, very little is known about the molecular and genetic basis of its medicinal and nutraceutical properties. RESULTS The de novo assembled 34.3 Mb L. rhinocerotis genome encodes 10,742 putative genes with 84.30% of them having detectable sequence similarities to others available in public databases. Phylogenetic analysis revealed a close evolutionary relationship of L. rhinocerotis to Ganoderma lucidum, Dichomitus squalens, and Trametes versicolor in the core polyporoid clade. The L. rhinocerotis genome encodes a repertoire of enzymes engaged in carbohydrate and glycoconjugate metabolism, along with cytochrome P450s, putative bioactive proteins (lectins and fungal immunomodulatory proteins) and laccases. Other genes annotated include those encoding key enzymes for secondary metabolite biosynthesis, including those from polyketide, nonribosomal peptide, and triterpenoid pathways. Among them, the L. rhinocerotis genome is particularly enriched with sesquiterpenoid biosynthesis genes. CONCLUSIONS The genome content of L. rhinocerotis provides insights into the genetic basis of its reported medicinal properties as well as serving as a platform to further characterize putative bioactive proteins and secondary metabolite pathway enzymes and as a reference for comparative genomics of polyporoid fungi.This research is supported by High Impact Research Grant UM.C/625/1/HIR/ MoE/E20040-20001 from the University of Malaya/Ministry of Education, Malaysia. H-YYY is supported by the postgraduate research grant (PPP) PV024/ 2012A from University of Malaya, Malaysia. Y-HC is a recipient of Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (ARC DECRA).© 2014 Yap et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise statedfungal proteinsgenes, fungalphylogenypolyporalespolysaccharidesgenomicsmedicine, east asian traditional2014-07-2910.1186/1471-2164-15-6352016-02-24