Abstract: This study aimed to gain insight into the metabolic mechanism of Paecilomyces variotii in the production of Maotai-flavor liquor for the purpose of providing an essential bioinformatic basis for further understanding and regulating the metabolism of this strain. The whole-genome sequencing of P. variotii MTDF-01, a strain isolated during the brewing of Maotai-flavor liquor, was carried out on the PacBio RS II platform. The sequencing reads were assembled and annotated via gene prediction and functional annotation. In the whole genome, 19 scaffolds and 19 contigs were obtained. The total length was 30 833 540 bp and the average GC content was 47.46%. A total of 8 815 genes, 5 044 simple sequence repeats (SSR), 221 tRNA and 49 rRNAs were predicted. The number of annotated genes was 8 662. The genome contained 60 starch hydrolase-coding genes and 165 cellulose hydrolase-coding genes, as well as 23 secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters. The genome rearrangement of MTDF-01 was different from that of P. variotii No.5, a formaldehyde-resistant strain isolated from soil. Synteny analysis indicated that genome rearrangement and translocation occurred among these genomes. A total of 16 414 single nucleotide base mutations were found in the genomes of the two strains, including 525 base deletions, 335 base insertions and 15 554 single base substitutions. The high-quality whole-genome sequence and potential function of P. variotii MTDF-01 obtained in this study are of great significance for future studies on the regulation of the flavor and health-benefiting substances of Maotai-flavor liquor.

Key words: Moutai-flavor liquor, Paecilomyces variotii, whole-genome sequencing, gene annotation