How to know unknown fungi: the role of a herbarium

Brock, P. M. , Döring, H. and Bidartondo, M. I. (2009) How to know unknown fungi: the role of a herbarium. New Phytologist, 181(3), pp. 719-724. (doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8137.2008.02703.x)

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Publisher's URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2008.02703.x

Abstract

•  The development of a universal approach to the identification of fungi from the environment is impeded by the limited number and narrow phylogenetic range of the named internal transcribed spacer DNA sequences available on GenBank. The goal here was to assess the potential impact of systematic DNA sequencing from a fungal herbarium collection.<p></p> •  DNA sequences were generated from a diverse set of 279 specimens deposited at the fungal herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (UK) and bioinformatic analyses were used to study their overlap with the public database.<p></p> •  It is estimated that c. 70% of the herbarium taxonomic diversity is not yet represented in GenBank and that a further c. 10% of our sequences match solely to ‘environmental samples’ or fungi otherwise unidentified.<p></p> •  Here it is shown that the unsampled diversity residing in fungal herbaria can substantially enlarge the coverage of GenBank's fully identified sequence pool to ameliorate the problem of environmental unknowns and to aid in the detection of truly novel fungi by molecular data.

Item Type:Articles
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Brock, Dr Patrick
Authors: Brock, P. M., Döring, H., and Bidartondo, M. I.
College/School:College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Biodiversity, One Health & Veterinary Medicine
Journal Name:New Phytologist
Publisher:Wiley
ISSN:0028-646X
ISSN (Online):1469-8137

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