Abstract

The genus Aspergillus is among the most abundant and widely distributed organisms on earth, and comprises approximately 350 accepted species. Economically it is one of the most important fungal genera for biotechnological and industrial use (enzymes, organic acids, active metabolites), but members of the genus are also frequently reported as foodborne contaminants (food spoilage and mycotoxin contamination), or as causative agents of human mycoses (pulmonary aspergillosis, otomycosis, keratitis). Recently, the ICN adopted the single name nomenclature which has forced mycologists to choose one name for fungi (i.e Aspergillus, Fusarium, Penicillium, etc.). In this respect, the phylogenetic approach was mainly used to settle the disputes on the right choice with decisions not affecting the majority of the concerned fungal group. This is not the case for the genus Aspergillus, because it is characterized by a well-defined asexual fruiting structure, but is very broad in concept, as it is associated with eleven sections with a sexual state. Two proposals for the single name nomenclature in Aspergillus are presented: one attributes the name "Aspergillus" to clades comprising seven different teleomorphic names, by supporting the monophyly of this genus. The other proposes that Aspergillus is a non-monophyletic genus, by preserving the Aspergillus name only to species belonging to subgenus Circumdati and maintaining the sexual names in the other lades. The aim of our study was to test the monophyly of Aspergilli by a multilocus phylogenetic approach which was applied by two independent analyses. One was run on the publicly available coding regions of six genes (RPB1, RPB2, Tsr1, Cct8, BenA, CaM), on 96 species of Penicillium, Aspergillus and related taxa. Bayesian and Ultrafast Maximum Likelihood (IQ-Tree) and RaxML analyses gave the same conclusion with highly supporting the monophyly of Aspergillus. The other analyses were also made by using publicly available data by using the coding sequences of nine loci (18S rRNA, 5,8S rRNA, 28S rRNA (D1-D2), RPB1, RPB2, CaM, BenA, Tsr1, Cct8) of 150 different species. Both Bayesian (MrBayes) and Maximum Likelihood (RAxML) trees obtained by this second round of independent analyses strongly supported the monophyly of the genus Aspergillus. The stability test also confirmed the robustness of the results obtained. In conclusion both conducted statistical analyses reject the hypothesis that Aspergilli are non-monophyletic, and gives robust arguments that the genus is monophyletic and clearly separated from the monophyletic genus Penicillium. We therefore conclude that there is no phylogenetic evidence to split Aspergillus and the name Aspergillus can be used for all the species belonging to Aspergillus i.e. the clade comprising the subgenera Aspergillus, Circumdati, Fumigati, Nidulantes, section Cremei and certain species which were formerly part of the genera Phialosimplex and Polypaecilum.

Autore Pugliese

• Perrone Giancarlo

Tutti gli autori

• G. Perrone; S. Kocsubé; D. Magistà; J. Houbraken; J. Varga; J.C. Frisvad; R.A.Samson

Titolo volume/Rivista

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Anno di pubblicazione

2016

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ISBN

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Settori ERC

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