Abstract
Background Madurella mycetomatis is the most common cause of human eumycetoma. The genus Madurella has been characterized by overall sterility on mycological media. Due to this sterility and the absence of other reliable morphological and ultrastructural characters, the taxonomic classification of Madurella has long been a challenge. Mitochondria are of monophyletic origin and mitochondrial genomes have been proven to be useful in phylogenetic analyses.ResultsThe first complete mitochondrial DNA genome of a mycetoma-causative agent was sequenced using 454 sequencing. The mitochondrial genome of M. mycetomatis is a circular DNA molecule with a size of 45,590 bp, encoding for the small and the large subunit rRNAs, 27 tRNAs, 11 genes encoding subunits of respiratory chain complexes, 2 ATP synthase subunits, 5 hypothetical proteins, 6 intronic proteins including the ribosomal protein rps3. In phylogenetic analyses using amino acid sequences of the proteins involved in respiratory chain complexes and the 2 ATP synthases it appeared that M. mycetomatis clustered together with members of the order Sordariales and that it was most closely related to Chaetomium thermophilum. Analyses of the gene order showed that within the order Sordariales a similar gene order is found. Furthermore also the tRNA order seemed mostly conserved.ConclusionPhylogenetic analyses of fungal mitochondrial genomes confirmed that M. mycetomatis belongs to the order of Sordariales and that it was most closely related to Chaetomium thermophilum, with which it also shared a comparable gene and tRNA order.
Highlights
Madurella mycetomatis is the most common causative agent of human mycetoma, a chronic inflammatory disease, which remains localized and involves subcutaneous tissues, fascia and bones [1]
The generic type species M. mycetomatis belonged to the order of Sordariales together with M. pseudomycetomatis, M. fahalii and M. tropicana, and the genus Madurella appeared to be closely related to the genus Chaetomium [3,4]
All genes and tRNAs are found on the plusstrand of the mitochondrial genome, as was found for mitochondria of most other ascomycetes for some ascomycetes such as Mycosphaerella graminicola genes were located both strands of the mitochondrial genome. [11,13,14,27,30,31]
Summary
Madurella mycetomatis is the most common causative agent of human mycetoma, a chronic inflammatory disease, which remains localized and involves subcutaneous tissues, fascia and bones [1]. With the development of molecular typing tools, such as sequencing of the nuclear sequences encoding for the internal transcribed spacer (ITS), the beta-tubulin gene and the ribosomal binding protein it became possible to establish the taxonomic place of Madurella among the ascomycetes [3,4] Based on these nuclear sequence data, it appeared that the genus Madurella, consisting of five species M. mycetomatis, M. grisea, M. pseudomycetomatis, M. fahalii and M. tropicana, could be taxonomically differentiated into two different orders, namely the orders Sordariales and Pleosporales [3,4]. The genus Madurella has been characterized by overall sterility on mycological media Due to this sterility and the absence of other reliable morphological and ultrastructural characters, the taxonomic classification of Madurella has long been a challenge. Mitochondria are of monophyletic origin and mitochondrial genomes have been proven to be useful in phylogenetic analyses
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