TITLE	Phylogenetic relationships of Monascus species inferred from the ITS and the partial b-tubulin gene
AUTHOR	Houng G. Park* American Type Culture Collection, P.O. Box 1549, Manassas VA 20108, USA Elena K. Stamenova American Type Culture Collection, P.O. Box 1549, Manassas VA 20108, USA Shung-Chang Jong American Type Culture Collection, P.O. Box 1549, Manassas VA 20108, USA
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ABSTRACT	ITS and partial b-tubulin genes of 17 ATCC reference strains of Monascus species were PCR amplified and sequenced. Monascus pilosus and M. ruber could not be differentiated with these sequences, suggesting a synonymy. In maximum parsimony analyses on both data sets, M. ruber, M. pilosus, M. purpureus, and M. sanguineus were placed into the same clade. ITS sequence alignment revealed a number of gaps in ITS1 and ITS2 of M. pallens, M. lunisporas, and M. eremophilus compared to M. purpureus, M. ruber, and M. pilosus. Accordingly, analyses with the ITS sequences placed these species into clades, incongruent with the analyses using the partial b-tubulin genes and the previous results with the partial large subunit rRNA genes. The phylogenetic relationship derived from the partial b-tubulin genes was similar to those postulated by the 5'-partial LSU rRNA genes. This finding strongly suggests that evolutionary or phylogenetic classification with ITS sequence information should be performed with caution. In the phylogenetic trees with the ITS sequences, M. lunisporas was distantly associated with Aspergillus ustus; M. pallens was placed in a clade that shares a common node with A. versicolor; and M. eremophilus was placed on a branch separate from the M. purpureus, M. ruber, and M. pilosus group while M. pallens and M. lunisporas were placed into the related clades sharing a common node in the tree derived from the partial b-tubulin gene. Each of the phylogenetic analyses with the partial b-tubulin genes, the ITS, or the 5'-end of the LSU rRNA, as previously carried out, placed M. eremophilus into a different lineage. Molecular analyses with these molecular targets generated three different topologies for M. eremophilus, indicating a unique and unpredictable genetic combination for this species. It might reflect extreme environmental stress on this species and subsequent genetic changes.
KEYWORD	b-tubulin; ITS; LSU rRNA; Monascus and phylogeny;
ARTICLE INFO	Botanical Bulletin of Academia Sinica, Volume 45 Number 4 October 2004, page 325-330, 6 pages
PUBLISHER	Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China