Abstract
Totally, 1.5 million fungal species estimated, of which less than 10 percent have been described to date. Recent advances in molecular biology as well as gene sequencing technologies facilitate the discovery and identification of new species in various groups of living organisms, especially fungi. Morphological methods do not have efficiency for the identification of fungal species, so, using new techniques based on DNA data has been considered in the rapid and accurate fungal species identification. DNA Barcoding is a new technique with several years’ backgrounds for detecting fungi and fungal like organisms. The Internal Transcribed Spacer in ribosomal RNA gene (ITS-rDNA) has been considered as a suitable barcode sequence. The efficacy of this region’s sequence data in most fungal groups has led to its use as a standard barcode by different mycologists. However, the ITS-rDNA region appears to be used as the primary barcode sequence for fungi of the genus or species group. The accurate species-specific identification is performed depending on the fungal group based on secondary barcodes. Due to the pleomorphic nature of fungi, the use of DNA barcoding is of importance. To date, hundreds of thousands of reference barcode sequences have been created for thousands of species of living organisms through DNA barcoding projects. The subsequent efforts of scientists are managing and automation of DNA barcoding in order to speed up the identification process.
Highlights
Species identification and classification is one of the most important parts of archeology and biological studies
The phylogenetic concept of the species is influenced by different variables such as the genome regions used to measure relationships between different fungal groups, but compared to other strategies are more reliable and repeatable, so in recent years it has become more popular among mycologists and is commonly used (Taylor et al, 2000; Taylor, 2006)
Problems and challenges in traditional methods based on morphology and the need for precision and speed in the taxonomy and correct diagnosis of living organisms have developed the importance of barcoding system in the identification of various human and plant pathogenic fungi
Summary
Species identification and classification is one of the most important parts of archeology and biological studies. DNA barcoding is complementary to taxonomy, molecular phylogeny, and population genetics (Hebert et al, 2003; Frézal and Leblois, 2008; Crous et al, 2009; Costa and Carvalho, 2010, Das and Deb, 2015; Gosavi, 2016; Chaudhary and Dahal, 2017) This method is similar to molecular phylogeny in that sequence data are used to identify taxons, but the main goal in molecular phylogeny is to study and reconstruct kinship relationships between living organisms at different taxonomic levels (species, genus, family, order etc,). In this review, considering to the strengths and weaknesses of common morphological and molecular methods for identification of fungi, it is tried to discuss on molecular techniques on fungal identification using the latest related articles from popular databases such as Google Scholar, Scopus, Medline, Pub med, Springer as well as Elsevier and using the suitable key words on fungal species identification, morphological species concept as well as DNA barcoding
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