Ji Yun Son, and Myung Kyum Kim *
Department of Bio & Environmental Technology, College of Natural Science, Seoul Women’s University,
Seoul 01797, Korea
ABBREVIATION
The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the combined sequences of the D1/D2
region of the Large subunit (LSU) rRNA gene and the Internal transcribed spacer (ITS)
region of strain E4 are MK246186 and MK246187, respectively. The MycoBank number for
Blastobotrys illinoisensis is MB830626.
Correspondence to biotech@swu.ac.kr
Korean Journal of Mycology (Kor J Mycol) December, 2022, 50(4):373-381.
https://doi.org/10.4489/KJM.20220041
Accepted: December 29, 2022; Revised: December 28, 2022; Received: September 10, 2021
Published: December, 2022.
© 2022 THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF MYCOLOGY.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Strain E4, an unrecorded species of dimorphic fungi, was isolated from the gut of earthworms collected in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the D1/D2 region of the large subunit (LSU) rRNA gene and the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region revealed that this species is a member of the genus Blastobotrys, Blastobotrys illinoisensis. Strain E4 differed from its closest known species, B. mokoenaii and B. malaysiensis, by harboring 3-5 and 12-14 nucleotide substitutions in the D1/D2 and ITS regions, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis based on concatenated sequences of the D1/D2 region of the LSU rRNA gene and the ITS region also indicated that strain E4 belongs to the Blastobotrys clade and is distinct from other related species in the clade. The previously unreported isolate could be distinguished from closely related species by its inability to ferment carbon sources. To our knowledge, this is the first report on the isolation of Blastobotrys species from the gut of earthworms in Korea. The strain used was E4 (=KCTC 27831=JCM 33428).
Blastobotrys sp., D1/D2, Earthworm, ITS (internal transcribed spacer), Yeast