Interview with Cletus Kurtzman and Teun Boekhout.

Abstract

Teun (TB) is working at the CBS Fungal Biodiversity Centre in Utrecht, The Netherlands, where he is heading the Yeast and Basidiomycete Research Group. He has a strong interest in pathogenic yeasts and biodiversity and questions such as what is a species. He is developing tools in clinical diagnostics and comparative genomics. Clete (CK) is a research microbiologist at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, a laboratory of the Agricultural Research Service, US Department of Agriculture and former Head of the ARS Culture Collection. He is focused on molecular identification of yeasts and their phylogenetic relationships, and the application in agriculture, biotechnology and clinical microbiology. > Q1: Can you explain in brief what is taxonomy and why is it important? > > CK: Taxonomy is the identification and description of species, with identification accomplished primarily from gene sequence comparisons. Systematics, the placement of species in levels of classification, is also now based on molecular phylogeny. The importance of taxonomy is to provide an accurate identification of species, which is essential for food safety, biotechnology, treatment of yeast infections and ecological studies. As phylogenetic relationships among species become better known, knowledge of this may lead to prediction of particular physiological or genetic characteristics. > > TB: Taxonomy deals with biodiversity and hence is a very fundamental science. Anybody who is working with a …