SIM
HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS
QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced]


     

Stud Mycol 59(1): 11-17 2007
DOI: 10.3114/sim.2007.59.02
Copyright © 2007 CBS Fungal Biodiversity Centre
This Article
Free via Open Access: OA
Right arrow OA Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Rokas, A.
Right arrow Articles by Nierman, W.C.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Rokas, A.
Right arrow Articles by Nierman, W.C.

You are free to share - to copy, distribute and transmit the work, under the following conditions:

Attribution:  You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

Non-commercial:  You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

No derivative works:  You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work, which can be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights.

What can comparative genomics tell us about species concepts in the genus Aspergillus?

A. Rokas1,*, G. Payne2, N.D. Fedorova3, S.E. Baker4, M. Machida5, J. Yu6, D. Ryan Georgianna2, Ralph A. Dean2, Deepak Bhatnagar6, T.E. Cleveland6, J.R. Wortman3, R. Maiti3, V. Joardar3, P. Amedeo3, D.W. Denning7 and W.C. Nierman3

1 Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, Nashville, TN 37235, U.S.A.
2 North Carolina State University, Department of Plant Pathology, Raleigh, NC 27695, U.S.A.
3 The J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville, MD 20850, U.S.A.
4 Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Fungal Biotechnology Team, Richland, WA 99352, U.S.A.
5 National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technologies, Research Institute of Cell Engineering, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8566, Japan
6 USDA/ARS/SRRC, New Orleans, LA 70124, U.S.A.
7 University of Manchester, School of Medicine, Manchester, M13 9PL, U.K.

* Correspondence: Antonis Rokas, antonis.rokas{at}vanderbilt.edu

Understanding the nature of species" boundaries is a fundamental question in evolutionary biology. The availability of genomes from several species of the genus Aspergillus allows us for the first time to examine the demarcation of fungal species at the whole-genome level. Here, we examine four case studies, two of which involve intraspecific comparisons, whereas the other two deal with interspecific genomic comparisons between closely related species. These four comparisons reveal significant variation in the nature of species boundaries across Aspergillus. For example, comparisons between A. fumigatus and Neosartorya fischeri (the teleomorph of A. fischerianus) and between A. oryzae and A. flavus suggest that measures of sequence similarity and species-specific genes are significantly higher for the A. fumigatus - N. fischeri pair. Importantly, the values obtained from the comparison between A. oryzae and A. flavus are remarkably similar to those obtained from an intra-specific comparison of A. fumigatus strains, giving support to the proposal that A. oryzae represents a distinct ecotype of A. flavus and not a distinct species. We argue that genomic data can aid Aspergillus taxonomy by serving as a source of novel and unprecedented amounts of comparative data, as a resource for the development of additional diagnostic tools, and finally as a knowledge database about the biological differences between strains and species.

Keywords comparative genomics / genetic diversity / genome sequences / identifcation of species boundaries






HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS
Copyright © 2007 by the CBS Fungal Biodiversity Centre.