Metabolomic Analysis Demonstrates the Impacts of Polyketide Synthases PKS14 and PKS15 on the Production of Beauvericins, Bassianolide, Enniatin A, and Ferricrocin in Entomopathogen

is a globally distributed entomopathogenic fungus that produces various secondary metabolites to support its pathogenesis in insects. Two polyketide synthase genes, and , are highly conserved in entomopathogenic fungi and are important for insect virulence. However, understanding of their mechanisms in insect pathogenicity is still limited. Here, we overexpressed these two genes in and compared the metabolite profiles of and overexpression strains to those of their respective knockout strains in culture and in vivo using tandem liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) with Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking (GNPS). The and clusters exhibited crosstalk with biosynthetic clusters encoding insect-virulent metabolites, including beauvericins, bassianolide, enniatin A, and the intracellular siderophore ferricrocin under certain conditions. These secondary metabolites were upregulated in the -overexpressing strain in culture and the -overexpressing strain in vivo. These data suggest that and , their proteins or their cluster components might be directly or indirectly associated with key pathways in insect pathogenesis of , particularly those related to secondary metabolism. Information about interactions between the polyketide clusters and other biosynthetic clusters improves scientific understanding about crosstalk among biosynthetic pathways and mechanisms of pathogenesis.