A rapid, standardized and cost-effective identification system is now essential for Fungi owing to their wide involvement in human health and life quality. Currently the molecular identification of species in Fungi is based primarily on nuclear DNA, but the potential use of mitochondrial markers has also been considered, due to their peculiar and favourable features, among which, above all, their high copy number, the possibility of an easier and cheaper recovering and the paucity of repetitive regions. Unfortunately, a serious difficulty in the PCR and bioinformatic surveys is due to the presence of mobile introns in almost all the fungal mitochondrial genes. The aim of the present work is to verify the incidence of this phenomenon in Ascomycota and to identify one or more mitochondrial gene regions where introns are missing so as to propose them as species markers (barcodes).
TOWARDS BARCODE MARKERS IN FUNGI: AN INTRON MAP OF ASCOMYCOTA MITOCHONDRIA
Santamaria Monica;Vicario Saverio;Domenica D'Elia;Vicario Saverio;
2008
Abstract
A rapid, standardized and cost-effective identification system is now essential for Fungi owing to their wide involvement in human health and life quality. Currently the molecular identification of species in Fungi is based primarily on nuclear DNA, but the potential use of mitochondrial markers has also been considered, due to their peculiar and favourable features, among which, above all, their high copy number, the possibility of an easier and cheaper recovering and the paucity of repetitive regions. Unfortunately, a serious difficulty in the PCR and bioinformatic surveys is due to the presence of mobile introns in almost all the fungal mitochondrial genes. The aim of the present work is to verify the incidence of this phenomenon in Ascomycota and to identify one or more mitochondrial gene regions where introns are missing so as to propose them as species markers (barcodes).I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
