Diversity of deep sea fungi in the Pacific Ocean revealed by culture-independent approach

Ref ID: 19324

Author:

Wei Xu, Guangwei Li, Xiangling Huang, Zhuhua Luo

Author address:

Key Laboratory of Marine Biogenetic Resources, Third Institute of Oceanography, State Oceanic
Administration, 178 Daxue Road, Xiamen 361005, P R China

Full conference title:

Asian Mycological Congress 2013 and the 13th International Marine and Freshwater Mycology Symposium

Date: 19 August 2014

Abstract:

The deep sea is recognized as an extreme environment and has been known to harbor high
biodiversity. The presence and ecological significance of bacteria and archaea in deep sea environments
have been well recognized, while the eukaryotic microorganisms, such as fungi, have been rarely
reported. In this study, diversity of fungi in the deep sea sediments from five locations at the Pacific
Ocean (depths ranging from 5017 to 6986 m) was investigated based on PCR-mediated internal
transcribed spacer (ITS) regions of rRNA gene clone analysis using multiple primer approach. A total of
1644, 1499, and 1480 fungal sequences were recovered from 12 sediment samples using universal,
Ascomycota-specific, and Basidiomycota-specific fungal primers sets respectively. 97, 69, and 20
different operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were identified from universal, Ascomycota-specific, and
Basidiomycota-specific clone libraries respectively based on 1% gene sequence distance cutoff. The
majority of the recovered sequences belonged to diverse phylotypes of Ascomycota and Basidiomycota
(40 ascomycetes and 13 basidiomycetes). The application of multiple primer approach enabled the
recovery of 20 sequences with low similarity (8804;97%) with available fungal sequences in the Genbank,
representing the potential new fungal species occurring in the deep sea environments. These results
suggested that the deep sea ecosystems may harbor high diverse fungi and many of them were
previously unexplored. This study provides key insights into the composition of marine fungi in the deep
sea environments and their ecological and physiological significance.

Abstract Number: I2-03

Conference Year: 2013

Link to conference website: NULL

New link: NULL

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