Filling gaps in biodiversity knowledge for macrofungi: contributions and assessment of an herbarium collection DNA barcode sequencing project.

Despite recent advances spearheaded by molecular approaches and novel technologies, species description and DNA sequence information are significantly lagging for fungi compared to many other groups of organisms. Large scale sequencing of vouchered herbarium material can aid in closing this gap. Here, we describe an effort to obtain broad ITS sequence coverage of the approximately 6000 macrofungal-species-rich herbarium of the Museum of Natural History in Venice, Italy.

Back to basics: an evaluation of NaOH and alternative rapid DNA extraction protocols for DNA barcoding, genotyping, and disease diagnostics from fungal and oomycete samples.

The ubiquity, high diversity and often-cryptic manifestations of fungi and oomycetes frequently necessitate molecular tools for detecting and identifying them in the environment. In applications including DNA barcoding, pathogen detection from plant samples, and genotyping for population genetics and epidemiology, rapid and dependable DNA extraction methods scalable from one to hundreds of samples are desirable. We evaluated several rapid extraction methods (NaOH, Rapid one-step extraction (ROSE), Chelex 100, proteinase K) for their ability to obtain DNA of quantity and quality suitable for the following applications: PCR amplification of the multicopy barcoding locus ITS1/5.

Seasonal patterns of spore deposition of heterobasidion species in four forests of the Western alps.

ABSTRACT Patterns of spore deposition by Heterobasidion species were studied between the spring of 1998 and December 2000 in four forests in the western Alps using woody traps. The maximum spore deposition rate (DR) ranged from 169 to 1,550 spores m(-2) h(-1). Although spores were captured from February to October at most sites, inoculum concentration consistently peaked in the late summer or early fall.