Fungi produce numerous and structurally diverse secondary metabolites, including toxins that contribute to plant pathogenesis and/or mycotoxicosis. Together, analytical chemistry, biochemical, gene-function, and comparative genomic studies have provided tremendous insights into evolutionary processes that result in this diversity. These processes include acquisition, loss and change in function of secondary metabolite biosynthetic genes. Other processes, such as horizontal transfer, can affect distribution and arrangement of biosynthetic genes but, in some cases, also contribute to structural diversity. Possible drivers of toxin structural diversity include variation in biological activity conferred by different structures as well as substrate specifity of detoxification enzymes.
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