Molecular identification of sterile fungi from forest leaf litter of Mount Makiling [Philippines] based on sequences of internal transcribed spacer regions of ribosomal DNA
2013
Aborot, Z.A.
Sterile fungi include filamentous fungi that are morphologically unidentifiable because they fail to produce spores in their natural habitat or when cultured in the laboratory. In this study, 59 sterile fungi isolated from leaf litter from the forest reserve of Mount Makiling during the wet and dry seasons did not sporulate when grown on culture media. Of the 59 isolates, 37 were obtained during the wet season whereas 22 were obtained during the dry season. The isolates were identified by amplification using polymerase chain reaction and subsequent analysis of the sequences of 5.8S gene alone and full length ITSI-5.8S-ITS2 regions of rDNA. Phylogenetic analysis of the 5.8S gene sequences revealed that the isolates belong to two major phyla of the kingdom Fungi, the Ascomycota and Bisidiomycota. Comparison of the nucleotide sequences of the ITSI-5.8s-ITS2 region with the highly similar sequences available in GenBank allowed the identification of the isolates to various taxonomic levels. Assessment of the species richness of the sterile fungi revealed that wet season had higher number of different species as compared to the dry season. Species richness was also found to the highest in higher elevations of MFR during the wet and dry seasons. Several of the identified sterile fungi in this study may perform important functions in the environment, industry and medicine.
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