Isolation and Characterization of Two Rare Mucoralean Species with Specific Habitats

Seo Hee Lee; Thuong T T Nguyen; Hyang Burm Lee

doi:10.1080/12298093.2018.1509513

Isolation and Characterization of Two Rare Mucoralean Species with Specific Habitats

Mycobiology. 2018 Sep 13;46(3):205-214. doi: 10.1080/12298093.2018.1509513. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Seo Hee Lee¹, Thuong T T Nguyen¹, Hyang Burm Lee¹

Affiliation

¹ Division of Food Technology, Biotechnology & Agrochemistry, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, Korea.

Abstract

The order Mucorales, the largest in number of species within the Mucoromycotina, comprises typically fast-growing saprotrophic fungi. During a study of the fungal diversity of undiscovered taxa in Korea, two novel mucoralean strains, CNUFC-GWD3-9 and CNUFC-EGF1-4, were isolated from specific habitats including freshwater and fecal samples, respectively. On the basis of their morphological characteristics and sequence analyses of internal transcribed spacer and large subunit ribosomal DNA, the CNUFC-GWD3-9 and CNUFC-EGF1-4 isolates were confirmed to be Gilbertella persicaria and Pilobolus crystallinus, respectively. It is ecologically, pathologically, and mycologically significant to find such rare zygomycetous fungi in such specific habitats.

Keywords: Mucorales; phylogeny; rare fungi; undiscovered taxa.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Graduate Program for the Undiscovered Taxa of Korea, and by the Project on Survey and Discovery of Indigenous Fungal Species of Korea funded by the NIBR, and in part by the Project on Discovery of Fungi from Freshwater and Collection of Fungarium funded by the NNIBR of the Ministry of Environment (MOE). This work was in part supported by the BK21 plus program through the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education of Korea.