Journal
FUNGAL ECOLOGY
Volume 6, Issue 6, Pages 522-526Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.funeco.2013.10.001
Keywords
Active fungal community; Basidiomycota; Fungal spores; Internal transcribed spacer (ITS); Precursor rRNA; Spore germination
Funding
- TREELIM group
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Understanding basic ecological processes within fungal communities is complicated by the cryptic and often below-ground habitat of most fungi. Up to now, molecular methods, enabling analyses of community processes and interaction strategies, have been mainly based on internal transcribed spacer (ITS) DNA analyses. The fact that these DNA profiles are contaminated by dormant propagules and dead material is a well known draw-back, obscuring sound conclusions. Recently, precursor ITS rRNA was suggested as a solution to this problem, as it was hypothesised that dormant and dead material contains little or no precursor rRNA. Our results show that basidiospores do not contain precursor ITS rRNA and thus confirm this hypothesis. This implies that the precursor ITS rRNA should be used for analysis and characterization of active species composition, when contamination of ungerminated basidiospores should be avoided. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd and The British Mycological Society. All rights reserved.
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