TY - JOUR
T1 - Comparison of DNA sequencing and morphological identification techniques to characterize environmental fungal communities
AU - Shinohara, Naohide
AU - Woo, Cheolwoon
AU - Yamamoto, Naomichi
AU - Hashimoto, Kazuhiro
AU - Yoshida-Ohuchi, Hiroko
AU - Kawakami, Yuji
N1 - Funding Information:
Sampling of the house dust in this study was supported by a Study of Health Effects of Radiation Organized by the Ministry of the Environment, Japan. The cost of DNA sequencing was supported by a grant from Seoul National University. We would like to express our gratitude to the residents of the examined houses for their cooperation. This research was approved in 2017 (11-04) by the ethics review committee of Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tohoku University, Japan.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - Culture-independent DNA sequencing of fungal internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) region was compared to a culture-dependent morphological identification technique to characterize house dust-borne fungal communities. The abundant genera were Aspergillus, Wallemia, Cladosporium, and Penicillium. Statistically significant between-method correlations were observed for Wallemia and Cladosporium (Spearman’s ρ = 0.75 and 0.72, respectively; p < 0.001). Penicillium tended to be detected with much higher (averaged 26-times) relative abundances by the culture-based method than by the DNA-based method, although statistically significant inter-method correlation was observed with Spearman’s ρ = 0.61 (p = 0.002). Large DNA sequencing-based relative abundances observed for Alternaria and Aureobasidium were likely due to multicellularity of their spores with large number of per-spore ITS2 copies. The failure of the culture-based method in detectiing Toxicocladosporium, Verrucocladosporium, and Sterigmatomyces was likely due to their fastidiousness growth on our nutrient medium. Comparing between the two different techniques clarified the causes of biases in identifying environmental fungal communities, which should be amended and/or taken into consideration when the methods are used for future fungal ecological studies.
AB - Culture-independent DNA sequencing of fungal internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) region was compared to a culture-dependent morphological identification technique to characterize house dust-borne fungal communities. The abundant genera were Aspergillus, Wallemia, Cladosporium, and Penicillium. Statistically significant between-method correlations were observed for Wallemia and Cladosporium (Spearman’s ρ = 0.75 and 0.72, respectively; p < 0.001). Penicillium tended to be detected with much higher (averaged 26-times) relative abundances by the culture-based method than by the DNA-based method, although statistically significant inter-method correlation was observed with Spearman’s ρ = 0.61 (p = 0.002). Large DNA sequencing-based relative abundances observed for Alternaria and Aureobasidium were likely due to multicellularity of their spores with large number of per-spore ITS2 copies. The failure of the culture-based method in detectiing Toxicocladosporium, Verrucocladosporium, and Sterigmatomyces was likely due to their fastidiousness growth on our nutrient medium. Comparing between the two different techniques clarified the causes of biases in identifying environmental fungal communities, which should be amended and/or taken into consideration when the methods are used for future fungal ecological studies.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41598-021-81996-w
DO - 10.1038/s41598-021-81996-w
M3 - Article
C2 - 33514828
AN - SCOPUS:85100077639
VL - 11
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
SN - 2045-2322
IS - 1
M1 - 2633
ER -