Fungal Diversity - Science topic

Hello Wati,

you should try to take a look into

Shipley, B. (2004). Cause and correlation in biology. A user's guide to path analysis, structural equations and causal inference. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.

Shipley, B. (1997). Exploratory path analysis with applications in ecology and evolution. The American naturalist, 149(6), 1113-1138. doi:10.1086/286041

Furthermore, you are mixing two different approaches how to connect measures with concepts--the reflective / common factor model which is the relevant measurement model underlying EFA and CFA and the composite model which refers to PCA.

In this thread, I posted some relevant key concepts and further papers

HTH

Holger

Are these fungal growths present in the dormant seed prior to hydroponic growth? What is the relative abundance of the sequences from the fungal growth relative to other sequences present in the dormant seed? What is the species of these fungal growths, are they endophytes?

My thought would be that the semi-hydroponic environment would be creating perhaps a greater selective pressure for some fungal species over others, this pressure maybe greater than that created by the host plant species genotype?

" Bayesian inference was calculated with MrBayes 3.1.2 with a general time reversible (GTR) model of DNA substitution and a gamma distribution rate variation across sites " means GTR+G, i.e. lset nst=6 rates=gamma.

Both G and I accomoate the rate variation across sites. So use G+I together appears redundant (somewhere in manual of RAxML).

Dear Jingjing Du ,

Yes, we have isolates of the genus Anguillospora. Please send me a private message or email me to isabelrodriguesfernandes@bio.uminho.pt to talk about this.

Best regards,

Isabel

I have now added more photos to this comment of the photobiont, ascii, paraphyses, and the ascospores, which are much clearer than I was able to attain before. The ascospores are 1-4 septate, and appear to either come in two types/maturities (one of which seems to have very distinct jigsaw-puzzle shaped septa, as shown in the photos), or the ascocarp I squashed may have had another species present. Average spore sizes of the two types (n=8 each) are 15.7 x 3.8 μm (jigsaw septa) and 17.9 x 4.4 μm (opaque spores) for the two types.

I still don't have access to Iodine to stain the ascus tips, but I am working on it!

Please have a look at the following RG link.

The ITS region is generally a good marker for differentiating species. However, the intraspecific variation might not be enough and it is not phylogenetically conserved.

If you plan to do any phylogeny at family level as you mention, I wouldn't recommend it, at least not by itself. The D1-D2 or D1-D3 sections of the LSU have been used more and more in the last years for being more variable than the SSU, but unlike the ITS is more phylogenetically consistent. Otherwise, the EF or alpha-tubulin might do, but I have no experience with them so I can't tell you for sure.

Hola Cristian

VCG is a classification at the subspecies level. You are not going to be sure if two isolates, belonging to the same VCG, are the same, albeit they are more closely related than two isolates of two different VCGs. However, it is a well-known (and relatively easy) tool that is going to give you useful ecologic information about your population; for example, in general, and depending on your species, you population could sexually reproduce if you have isolates of different MAT within a given VCG.

Un saludo

Dear Francisco, thank you for the information provided. The attached files may provide you some more information.

The ITS loci, specially ITS1 – ITS2 and ITS can provide very accurate data about the specific identification of the fungal species. The reason behind that may be lies on the nature of these loci in terms of their very high consensus sequences among fungal genera. Furthermore, some ITS loci provide more accurate data to the species level. The detective ability of ITS regions extend beyond fungal species to include other micro- as long as macro-organisms.

As per my understanding from your complete details given above.

You are planning to do Metagenomics of Fungal species isolated from different/plant.

You have amplified with the given 96 adapters by the manufacturer.

As per the manual, they says, you have to dilute all the samples in an equimolar concentration, otherwise, if u dont follow the same.

You may endup in a wrong image of fungal species among your samples.

Its better to do with Equimolar concentration, its like Reverse transcriptase PCR, you need a control. without that how could you say this fungal species is predominant or less prediminant among the test samples.

Hence, You try to take a qubit for the amplified products, and do dilution with calculations in excel sheet given by the manufacturer.

Primer dimer, need not to worry, it will be removed during size selection and other washing steps, even if it goes upto upstream process, it can be removed during bioinformatic analyses.

All the best.

Murugan N

 

You are welcome

Dear Thomas,

thank you very much for your help. 

Best wishes

Vytautas

Yes its possible. Unfortunately there is the possibility that one of the barcode was attributed to Aspergillus but comes from a different species, basically a mistake by th eperson that entered the sequence. Try the the Bar Code of life it is well curated: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/IDS_OpenIdEngine

The second possibility is that the two aspergillus species cannot be separated at the species level using their  bar code, however 100% is surprising, I would go for the above mentionned option.

I suggest that culture technique is not especially useful in this application.  Many fungi will not be readily culturable and recovery will be driven by sporulating fungi that are readily culturable.  Note Dr. Tarafdar 's linked paper.

Hi Elahe

Just you need to monitor few steps  carefully of Trizol manual method  to get good result

First, crush that creature (mature 3-5 will be enough) with trizol either with a micropestle or by a homogenizer. The volume of trizol will be 750-1000uL.

All the centrifugation should be done @ 4 degrees.

Then centrifuge (10000 rpm for 10 min) to pellet the debris, supernatant will be separated. Wait for 5 min @ RT.

Add 200-250uL of chloroform shake vigorously for 20 sec (Red color of trizol will be turned pinkish ) wait for 5 min @ RT.

Centrifuge @ 12000 rpm for 15 min to separate transparent sup. in a new vial.

Then add ice child (-20, 500uL) Isoprop dropwise by pipette wait to react for 5 min @ rt and incubated for overnight @ -80.

Centrifuge @ 12000 rpm for 15 min, a white pellet will be observed and then clean by 70% chilled ethanol, air dried and dissolved in 50 uL RNase-free water.

During RNA extraction each and every accessory should be RNase free and try to use a dust free enviornment for better result.

Hope will help.

Thank you dear  Barkat and Dhurgham for responding me!

 

239

Hi Yifan Ooi

The culture is old and Pic. 1 is chlamydospores

I think using trnH-psbA  as chloroplast region is not enough because it's too short to match the sequence. Therefore it needs another region, I recommend adding rbcL or matK to make the results stronger. The useful program is TaxonDNA .

Dear Prof.  Gibbs, I really appreciate your time and efforts dedicated  to get me the answer, your data is so valuable , I am going to test the potivirid primers to detect ipomoviruses....

Many thanks

Penicillium and Aspergillus genus only

Hi Laith,

Thanks for your suggestion, I know how to construct ITS2 phylogenetic tree, but I don't know how to find the secondary structures by MFOLD and generate consensus structure by 4SALE. Could you give me an example if you know how to do? Thank you!

This is for sure a member of Sarcoscyphaceae. It is likely a species of Sarcoscypha if it is collected during the winter and no hairs. If it is from tropic area with some hairs, it would be species of Cookeina.

Agree with Prakash

Dear Ourlad,

In my opinion this one can be Hexagonia sp., but additional checking od the specimen is needed. Besides you can obtain some information and look through pictures from an Indian paper at http://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/article/view/2553/3763

With best regards,

Elena

Dear Farrukh Baig

Even though NCBI is a great database collecting a lot of information useful for scientists, it has the problem that too many data are registered with wrong species determination, bad sequence quality etc.

Therefore we use some other databases for the molecular idenfication of taxa, which are managed by curators. That means curators ensure the quality of (i) DNA sequences and of (ii) species determination.

First we check databases with curators, then we compare with NCBI...

- UNITE: https://unite.ut.ee/ (go to "run analysis", use field "blastn"). Check the taxon/taxa with the best score bits. Below the list of taxa you will find the nucleotide sequences displayed and they are linked to the corresponding NCBI entry. If your sequence has gaps or differs in some nucleotide, check your raw data. Are you sure your sequence quality is "good"?

- BOLD: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/IDS_OpenIdEngine (go to "ITS", use "all barcodes"). You can check the best match on the right column: press on "published". If sequences are depostited in BOLD but still not published, you will not be able to open this file ("early release").

I hope this helps you!

Carolina

Dear, Ourlad,

The fungus is Amauroderma sp. Microscopical analysis is needful for more precise identification.

Best regards,

Elena

Yes absolutely agree

Hi

Here is the protologue of Agaricus anthocephalus (=Lentinus anthocephalus):

 A good description and plate is on Pegler´s 1971 monograph on Lentinus

or also here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3667639?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Thank you sir

Shuvrah,

 They are synonims:

Drechslera oryzae (Breda de Haan) Subram. & B.L. Jain, Current Science 35 (14): 354 (1966)  

Synonymy:

≡Helminthosporium oryzae Breda de Haan, Bulletin de I'lnstitut Botanique de Buitenzorg 6: 11 (1900)

≡Bipolaris oryzae (Breda de Haan) Shoemaker, Canadian Journal of Botany 37 (5): 883 (1959) ]

≡Luttrellia oryzae (Breda de Haan) Gornostai, Vodorosli, Griby i Mkhi Dal'nego Vostoka: 81 (1978)

=Helminthosporium macrocarpum Grev., Scott. crypt. fl. (Edinburgh): pl. 148 (1825)

Alex

Dear Pulak,

near all the variants you've mentioned are possible. Majority of plants have only one type of mycorrhiza, but some species can combine both AM and EM strategies. For example, Eucalyptus is a tree which can have both mycorrhizal types in one root system and proportion of ecto- and arbuscular root tips depends on a range of biotic and abiotic factors (e.g., the age of the plant or N or P lack dominating under certain conditions). Details you can see in

Jones M.D., Durall D.M., Tinker P.B. 1998. A comparison of arbuscular and ectomycorrhizal Eucalyptus coccifera: growth response, phosphorus uptake effi ciency and external hyphal production // New Phytologist. Vol.140. P.125–134.

Lapeyrie F.F., Chilvers G.A. 1985. An endomycorrhiza-ectomycorrhizal succession associated with enhanced growth by Eucalyptus dumosa seedlings planted in a calcarious soil // New Phytologist. Vol.100. P.93–104

Reddell P., Malajczuk N. 1984. Formation of mycorrhizae by jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata Donn ex Smith) in litter and soil // Australian Journal of Botany. Vol.32. P.511–520.

Pagano M.C., Scotti M.R. 2008. Arbuscular and ectomycorrhizal colonization of two Eucalyptus species in semiarid Brazil // Mycoscience. Vol. 49. P.379 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10267-008-0435-3

Adams F., Reddell P., Webb M.J., shipton W.A. 2006. Arbuscular mycorrhizas and ectomycorrhizas on Eucalyptus grandis (Myrtaceae) trees and seedlings in native forests of tropical north-eastern Australia // Australian Journal of Botany. Vol.54. P.271–281. http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/BT05028.htm

As for natural ecosystems, as a rule they contain many plant species with diverse mycorrhizal types. Boreal and temperate forests have  ectomycorrhizal tree layer along with predominantly arbuscular mycorrhizal herb layer. For basics on mycorrhizas and its role in broader contexts you can see Smith S.E., Read D.J. 2008.  Mycorrhizal Symbiosis (Third Edition). ISBN: 978-0-12-370526-6 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/book/9780123705266.

At any case, mycorrhizal types combinations depend on plant species involved.

Best regards,

Elena

 

You are right Chris. According to my RNA-seq data, sponge transcripts resembled way higher similarities with fungal transcripts than I expected. In the end I used GhostKOALA instead of blast to distinguish if it's fungal transcript or sponge transcript. But I did recover ~20,000 fungal transcripts, including several house-keeping genes like actin.

Hi Caitlin,

It depends of your barcode. If you target rDNA genes, several pipelines can be used to manage and treat efficiently your results, e.g. QIIME, Mothur, or other ones such as Frogs or GnS-PIPE.

If your target is the ITS, you'll need to use some other pipelines dedicated to the ITS analysis, as some steps of treatment are different.

If you need more information, just ask, I'll be pleased to help

Best regards.

it's also within my concern this species belongs to genus Chapsa...right now i'm doing the analysis...tq for the enlightenment mr Adam Flakus...

Dear Ricardo most hot spots in poor countries without taxonomist face sort of same issues. Of course the Amazon is bigger, so the challenge is bigger. In my experience in Mexico where most mushrooms are unknown and few taxonomist available (particularly in tropical regions) a good approach is to do good voucher specimens and sequence (ITS region) all your collections. Even in the species is not in public databases, the sequences most of the time give you the genus an closer species.  They also give good clues on new potential taxa and help in focusing on groups of interesting taxa. They also allow you to know many things you have even if you dont have names for them.

sequencing is not very expensive, we expend doing every thing in mexico like 12 american dollars per sample, from DNA extraction to double strand sequencing.

Given, the hot, moisture, insects and molds, I would say your biggest challenge is not collecting or identifying but keeping the materials in good shape por the near future. You may think having DNA collections also.

my best

If you mean bitunicate asci, lactophenol blue or Congo red are good choices, but if you want to see a differential stain to characterize the apical ring, Lugol can give amyloid, dextrinoid or hemiamyloid reactions in fresh ascomycetes.

In marine and terrestrial environments it is an interesting aspect about how this competition evolves and is regulated for the fitness of the producer:  http://mmbr.asm.org/content/71/2/295.short https://femsre.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/5/957 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/337/6098/1107 http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/v9/n1/abs/ismej2014106a.html  

Zhang Apple,

Elena makes some really useful points above. The interaction is a two way process and the plant wants to encourage the right microbiology around it's outer surfaces.

You will I guess already be aware of fungal mycorrhizal associations with plant roots, these associations are truly beneficial to both parties. Many edible fungi are Ceps are associated with trees.

The rhizosphere is a very interesting aspect of modern microbiology. The whole subject of microbial interactions with other living surfaces is part of the paradigm shift is looking for help from the beneficial microbes rather than trying to fight the bad guys.

This is receiving lots of research effort from many companies who see it's potential in improving nutrient uptake, reduced pesticide usage etc

I found the two attached papers very interesting with this regard.

I think you are working in a very inciting area of research, good luck with your studies.

Andrew Goddard

Dear Prakash,

This problem is difficult to resolve indeed. Macrofungi are usually treated the same way as clonal plants or colonial invertebrates are and they are commonly assessed by artificial units (modules) such as fruitbodies. This approach is not perfect but it allows to compare your data with data other researchers obtained and to get relative results for comparison within your research. Besides, the protocols are strongly depending on fungal ecology - soil fungi are different to wood inhabitants and so on. For more details you can see Foster M., Mueller G., Bills G. (2004) Biodiversity of fungi. Inventory and monitoring methods. Boston. Elsevier Academic Press and the manual in attachment.

With best regards,

Elena

Dear Milind Mutnale,

Yes, it does. You should have a look at these 2 papers:

Cheers,

Vincent Hervé

You can always do a PyCrust functional prediction based on which taxa were identified from the amplicon sequencing to get an idea of what to expect from your RNA sequencing. You could remove rRNA sequences from your dataset by using a database-based filtering approach. If you want to avoid sequencing the rRNA genes altogether, you could consider doing a rRNA subtraction with probes (see attached paper).

Hope this at least points you in the right direction!

Kind regards,

Riegardt Johnson

Your preservation could be as simple as snap freezing in liquid nitrogen and then storing on dry ice until you get the samples back to the lab. You don't want them to thaw until you do the extraction, however. You could also test out Lifeguard or RNAlater for nucleic acid preservation. You would still want to freeze the samples or at least keep them on ice.

Hello, Girish Gogoi.

To demonstrate that an agaricoid collection belongs to the Amanitaceae, it is necessary to do two things:   (1) Make a transverse section of a gill and observe that the lamella trama is bilateral and divergent and (2) make a thin longitudinal section of the flesh of the stem (not in an area of central pith and not near the external surface) and demonstrate that the tissue is "longitudinally acrophysalidic."  These terms will be found defined on a set of pages of the "Studies in the Amanitaceae" website starting with this page:

Many of the generalizations about macroscopic characters of amanitas in the literature are not true.  The above method is definitive for agaricoid mushrooms.

The above two microcharacters (note that no measurements are required) are the precise way to determine a member of the Amanitaceae.  To separate Amanita and Lepidella within the Amanitaceae, there are many useful characters that are also treated on the same web site.  For example, Amanita gill edges are sterile while Limacella edges are fertile.  This is because of the radically different ontogenies of the organisms in the two genera.  This is also treated in the pages mentioned above.

If the material you photographed is an Amanita, then it is very likely that it belongs to Amanita section Lepidella sensu Bas.  This would require its spores to be amyloid and the margin of its cap to be appendiculate with relatively fine universal veil material and its stipe's base not to be enclosed in a saccate volva. 

Within section Lepidella, the structure of the volva, the pallid colorations, and the rooting bulb on the stem base suggest that the species might belong (you will have to demonstrate this) to Amanita subsection Solitariae. 

It appears from your researchgate page that you are collecting in Assam.  I don't think that any European Amanita name will apply; nor will any name from the Americas. 

I would suggest your reviewing the literature of Colonial times in the Himalayan region.  For species of section Lepidella, the 1969 thesis of the late Dr. Cornelis Bas is a very good place to start.

  Also the recent extensive work done by the group in Dr. Z. L. Yang's laboratory in Kunming, Yunnan, PRC will be very relevant to your study of the mushroom.

The list of amanitas for India published by R. P. Bhatt et al. [Bhatt, R. P., R. E. Tulloss, K. C. Semwal, V. K. Bhatt, J.-M. Moncalvo and S. L. Stephenson. 2003. Amanitaceae reported from India. A critically annotated checklist. Mycotaxon 88: 249-270.] may be of some use.  However, it is just a beginning and cannot serve to help you with details of determination.

Very best,

Rod Tulloss

Hi Tatiana,

a lot of studies proposed fungal primer pairs to NGS approaches (Ihrmark et al., 2012; Toju et al., 2012; Blaalid et al., 2013). Our latest results confirmed that the primers ITS1F / ITS2 (Gardes & Bruns, 1993) are the most convincing, using mock fungal communities. The Toju’s primers seem also valid. The primers developed by Ihrmark are good also (better covering for Ascomycetes), but they also amplify the plants (eg oak). Pay attention to the environmental matrix you use ...

Be careful, if you include your bacterial 16S amplicons in the same run as your fungal ITS amplicons, because Miseq technology requires that your amplification products are fairly similar sizes ...

Gardes M, Bruns TD (1993) ITS primers with enhanced specificity for Basidiomycetes: application to the identification of mycorrhizae and rusts. Mol Ecol 2: 113–118.

Toju, H., Tanabe, A. S., Yamamoto, S., & Sato, H. (2012). High-coverage ITS primers for the DNA-based identification of ascomycetes and basidiomycetes in environmental samples.
Ihrmark, K., Bödeker, I. T., Cruz-Martinez, K., Friberg, H., Kubartova, A., Schenck, J., ... & Lindahl, B. D. (2012). New primers to amplify the fungal ITS2 region–evaluation by 454-sequencing of artificial and natural communities. FEMS microbiology ecology, 82(3), 666-677.

Dear colleague

Harmoniella chrysocephalus V.N. Boriss.is located in Ucrania, and Crimea also, asociated to Pinus spp. please check: http://www.cybertruffle.org.uk

I recommend Our book: East Asian Polypores (Nunez & Ryvarden 2001, vol. 1-2). Fungiflora, Oslo. Macro-and microscopical descriptions, but not Pictures. There is a good Japanese polypore flora with pictures that can be useful for many of your species. Dr. Tsutomu Hattori from FFPRI in Tsukuba is a very goog polypore taxonomist.

Dear Attila,

nice photographs ! The squamulose pileus and the growth on burnt ground (see Noordelos, Fungi Europaei 5, pag. 627) are quite typical for E. flocculosum (Bres) Pacioni whose holotypus was picked up in northern Italy (not far from Hungary) by Giacomo Bresadola.

Other characters fit quite well (isodiametrical spores, lack of cheilocystidia, odourless basidiomes and so on)

Please let me know what you think about it.because I could be wrong, of course.

I am always at your disposal.

All the best.

Eliseo

.

Dear Oadi

Trees only tell you how diversity is partitioned. From your graph, I would say you have two single outliers and the rest forms one group without any further clear structuring. Anyhow, it is good practice to estimate how many times the branching at each node is supported, which is usually done by bootstrapping (for a genetic distance matrix you could use "seqboot" from the Philip suite)

Hope this helps

Pablo

Fungal isolate is defined as race when it is specifically virulent on a particular crop variety. This particular race may be avirulent on the second , third or 4th or 5th crop variety. This doesn't mean this particular race has five avirulent genes. This phenomenon can only be determined through differential set inoculation experiment, supplemented by molecular analysis. A fungal isolate may possesses one, two, three, four, hundreds or thousands virulent genes, this is counted only when this particular isolate appears as a virulent pathogen on a particular crop variety, avirulent genes are never counted.

It is established  fact an avirulent race may be used as an antagonist against the virulent race of the same pathogen- the technique is called local or systemic acquired resistance.

If a host variety allows the growth of an aviruelnt isolate, the crop variety is susceptible. However, if this isolate cannot grow on that particular crop variety, it is no way be wise to call it a resistant variety.

Thanks to all of you

If the fungus won't sporulate, there are alternatives to single sporing and morphological identification. 

Using a dissecting microscope or magnifying lens you can cut out a hyphal tip from the agar and plate that. It should only be a few cells which will be the one species and reproduce clonally. You can also use the ITS region, elongation factor1 and beta tubulin sequences to identify the fungus. 

Dear Timur, for sure I would be interested

 in smut specimens. If there are specimens of which the data is interesting for a publication we usually work like that: Marcin Piatek works on morphology (LM + SEM), I work on molecular phylogeny and you will be included as author, too. Could you provide a list of host plants on which you have smut specimens available?

Would be nice to cooperate with you!

Cheers

Matthias

This is either Parmeliaceae or Physciaceae because of the distinct lobes. If you collected it, can you make another picture?

Use acriflavine hydrochlorid, dosage 0.45 per 100 ml in vehicle q. s. p. Treatment of adult fish: two drops of 3 liters. Eggs: diluting a water drop in a 10ml container and collected with a pipette content of the diluted and pour just a drop in the containers containing the eggs.

I think: if you use distilled water for soaking the bark samples and sterile vessels for the collecting and Transport, it is reliable: the species you get were on the sample and are not introduced. Surely you could object: two spores would be enough that have been on the sample - and they can have been wind-blown to the sample from far away. Likely? No.

If you use dirty vessels and tap water for soaking, the species you obtain can be foreign.

Since you have one species of Trichoderma only. The best marker will be SSRs. Don't do simple diversity but see the population structure which will help you in indentifying the various evolutionary forces shaping the fungus tragteroies

It would be nice that Maria Marta Reynoso from Universidad de Río Cuarto (Argentina) answers this question!!

Well its a normal phenomenon, any metabolically acceptable mineral in low or adequate amount will be useful and its excess amount will be bad e.g. hypercalcemia in our body etc. Same is the case for fungi too.

Well about higher (filamentous) fungi, people have not studied the affect of NaCl much, but to the level of yeast, especially on halophilic yeast there are publications available particularly on Hortaea werneckii, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, etc. Mostly the high salt creates the low water activity in the cells of fungi which slows down the flow of transportation in and outside fungal cells. In halophilic yeast some bio-compatible solutes helps to maintain the balance of materials inside and outside yeasts. 

I am working on obligate halophilic fungi, which cant grow without NaCl, and quite a high concentration helps their metabolic machinery such as enzymes. These come out to be more interesting case than normal halophilic organisms. We are still working to see how they do so.

I hope I have answered a bit of your query.

Hi,

% similarity doesn't help to much. Colletotrichum citri, as far as I know, belongs to the C. acutatum species complex and it has been firstly described by Huang et al. 2013 in "Colletotrichum species associated with cultivated citrus in China" (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13225-013-0232-y). If there are info around they should be in this paper. If you need any help let me know.

Good luck

Riccardo

If you are interested in Medical Mycology,please see my many papers published in several journals.The most simple way to see the fungal elements in clinical samples is to use 10% KOH mounts.You can isolate most of the fungi on Sabouraud medium,and Pal sunflower seed medium.The later medium imparts brown colour to the colonies of Cryptococcus neoformans,and hence,it is a differential mediu,m for C.neoformans.The morphological studies of fungal isolates can be done in PHOL (Pal,Hasegawa,Ono,Lee) stain or Narayan stain.These are the easy and simple ways to work on fungi in poor resource countries.I never used expensive methods for the study of fungi.With simple techniques,I could publish over 180 papers.I wish you all can do excellent work in mycology.

Maybe you can use flow-cytometry as reference to correlate the number of spores to OD.

Hello,

Maybe you can access the original description of Tricholoma cossonianum (Bull. Soc. Mycol. Fr. 40(4): 300). If possible take also a look at the plate XXI included by Maire et al., has a small picture of a few spores.

More interesting in order to have an idea of the shape of spores is the article with the recombination by Pierre Arthur Moreau & Marco Contú (Bull. FAMM 32). In page 46 of this bulletin is included a microscopic table with spores and other microscopical elements.

Most of the photos are included in the web page of FAMM, unfortunately page 46 with microscopic features is not included, as they seem to link only photos:

Just being from a particular host does not indicate what species an isolate belongs to.  To separate these species, mating testing has been used (see Leslie and Summerell 2006) and could be useful for you.  If your tests indicate you might have a hybrid, you would generally need to look at a number of different, independent, genetic loci or markers to determine whether you had loci related to both potential parents.

Dr. John Leslie at Kansas State is one of the experts on this (e.g. http://aem.asm.org/content/70/4/2254.full?sid=fb365f66-c956-4a18-ae25-fd62c9cd96ba).  You should be able to consult with him to get some good information.

Dear colleague,

This species is soil inhabitant and a biological control agent against Globodera and Heterodera spp.

Colonies of this fungus is lilac to purple,Hyphae branched and septate, Conidiophores arising from hyphae, aerial myselia and occasionally forming synnemata. Conidia smooth to minutely rough. chlamydospore absent.

the below link can help you to identify this fungus:

All the best.

Hi Muhammad,

get a sequence of the rDNA-ITs region. blast against UNITE (http://unite.ut.ee) - there are information there about the current state of knowledge for the mycorrhizal status of each species hypothesis.

however All fungi isolated from soils have the potential to function in symbiosis with plants, depending on plant species and conditions. we still have very limited knowledge of what is or not capable of functioning as mycorrhizal symbionts.

You could set up bioassays if you have access to sterile culture facilities. but it takes time and effort - so it depends how important it is for you to find out.

cheers