PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Chinnamani PrasannaKumar
AU  - Shanmugam Velmurugan
AU  - Kumaran Subramanian
AU  - S. R. Pugazhvendan
AU  - D. Senthil Nagaraj
AU  - K. Feroz Khan
AU  - Balamurugan Sadiappan
AU  - Seerangan Manokaran
AU  - Kaveripakam Raman Hemalatha
AU  - Bhagavathi Sundaram Sivamaruthi
AU  - Chaiyavat Chaiyasut
TI  - DNA barcoding analysis of more than 1000 marine yeast isolates reveals previously unrecorded species
AID  - 10.1101/2020.08.29.273490
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.08.29.273490
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/09/06/2020.08.29.273490.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/09/06/2020.08.29.273490.full
AB  - For the yeast population and diversity marine habitats are the least explored niches. The aim of the present study is to create a comprehensive DNA barcode library for marine derived yeast species. As we sequenced the ITS gene for 1017 isolates belonging to 157 marine derived yeast species in 55 genera, 28 families, 14 orders, 8 classes of 2 Phyla (viz., Ascomycota and Basidiomycota) of which 13 yeast species were first time barcoded, we witnessed yeast species of both terrestrial and marine endemic origin. Due to the large volume of sequencing trace files, the variable length of extracted sequences, and the lack of reference sequences in public databases, difficulties were faced in taxonomic sequence validation. The length of the majority (62.24%) of the sequences were between 600 and 649 base pairs. K2P intra-species distance analysis performed for selective groups yielded an average of 0.33%, well below the previously proposed yeast barcode gap. ITS gene tree based identification conducted for selective species in Ascomycota and Basidomycota, precisely clustered the same species into one group. Approximately 60% of the yeast species identified in this study were previously unrecorded from the marine environment, of which 16.5% were recognised as human pathogens. Apart from releasing the barcode data in GenBank, provisions were made to access the entire dataset along with meta-data in the Barcode of life database. This research constitutes the largest dataset to date for collecting marine yeast isolates and their barcodes.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.