Abstract
Background: A large number of undiscovered fungal species still exist on earth, which can be useful for bioprospecting, particularly for single cell oil (SCO) production. Mortierella is one of the significant genera in this field and contains about hundred species. Moreover, M. alpina is the main single cell oil producer at commercial scale under this genus. Methods: Soil samples from four unique locations of North-East Libya were collected for the isolation of oleaginous Mortierellaalpina strains by a serial dilution method. Morphological identification was carried out using light microscopy (Olympus, Japan) and genetic diversity of the isolated Mortierella alpina strains was assessed using conserved internal transcribed spacer (ITS) gene sequences available on the NCBI GenBank database for the confirmation of novelty. The nucleotide sequences reported in this study have been deposited at GenBank (accession no. MZ298831:MZ298835). The MultAlin program was used to align the sequences of closely related strains. The DNA sequences were analyzed for phylogenetic relationships by molecular evolutionary genetic analysis using MEGA X software consisting of Clustal_X v.2.1 for multiple sequence alignment. The neighbour-joining tree was constructed using the Kimura 2-parameter substitution model. Results: The present research study confirms four oleaginous fungal isolates from Libyan soil. These isolates (barcoded as MSU-101, MSU-201, MSU-401 and MSU-501) were discovered and reported for the first time from diverse soil samples of district Aljabal Al-Akhdar in North-East Libya and fall in the class: Zygomycetes; order: Mortierellales. Conclusions: Four oleaginous fungal isolates barcoded as MSU-101, MSU-201, MSU-401 and MSU-501 were identified and confirmed by morphological and molecular analysis. These fungal isolates showed highest similarity with Mortierella alpina species and can be potentialistic single cell oil producers. Thus, the present research study provides insight to the unseen fungal diversity and contributes to more comprehensive Mortierella alpina reference collections worldwide.
Highlights
Edible oils produced by oleaginous microorganisms are named as single cell oils (SCO)
Molecular characterization and genetic diversity In the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences analysis based on BLASTn (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool for nucleotides), Management and Science University (MSU)-101, MSU-201, MSU-401 and MSU-501 isolates were fall within the order Mortierellales as depicted in Figures 3 and 4, which matches with morphological identification of isolates as described above
The phylogenetic tree constructed by neighbour joining mode with 1000 bootstrap values, showed that four oleaginous fungal isolates were 100% similar with earlier M. alpina genomes sequences submitted in GenBank NCBI as shown in Table 2 and Figures 3 and 4
Summary
Edible oils produced by oleaginous microorganisms are named as single cell oils (SCO). M. alpina is one of the main single cell oil producing species/ arachidonic acid producing at commercial scale under Mortierella genus. Results: The present research study confirms four oleaginous fungal isolates from Libyan soil. These isolates (barcoded as MSU-101, MSU201, MSU-401 and MSU-501) were discovered and reported for the first time from diverse soil samples of district Aljabal Al-Akhdar in North-East Libya and fall in the class: Zygomycetes; order: Mortierellales. Conclusions: Four oleaginous fungal isolates barcoded as MSU-101, MSU-201, MSU-401 and MSU-501 were identified and confirmed by morphological and molecular analysis These fungal isolates showed highest similarity with Mortierella alpina species and can be potentialistic single cell oil producers.
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