The nuclear ribosomal intergenic spacer (IGS) region was structurally analyzed and exploited for molecular discrimination and phylogenetic analysis of vegetative compatibility groups (VCGs) of Verticillium dahliae. A structural study of 201 available IGS sequences of the fungus was performed, and four classes of ubiquitous repetitive elements, organized in higher-order repetitive structures or composite blocks, were detected in a variable IGS subregion. This subregion was amplified from an international collection of 59 V. dahliae isolates covering all VCGs, together with nine representative V. albo-atrum and V. longisporum isolates, and sequenced. Structural and phylogenetic analyses of the sequences of this polymorphic IGS subregion were consistently informative and allowed the identification of two main lineages in V. dahliae, that is, clade I including VCGs 1A, 1B, 2A, 4B, and 3 and clade II containing VCGs 2B, 4A, and 6. Analysis of IGS sequences proved a highly suitable molecular tool for (a) rapid interspecific differentiation, (b) intraspecific discrimination among VCGs of V. dahliae, facilitating high-throughput VCG confirmation and prediction/profiling, and (c) phylogenetic analysis within and among V. dahliae VCGs.

Group-I introns are widespread--though irregularly distributed--in eukaryotic organisms, and they have been extensively used for discrimination and phylogenetic analyses. Within the Verticillium genus, which comprises important phytopathogenic fungi, a group-I intron was previously identified in the SSU-rRNA (18S) gene of only V. longisporum. In this work, we aimed at elucidating the SSU-located intron distribution in V. dahliae and other Verticillium species, and the assessment of heterogeneity regarding intron content among rDNA repeats of fungal strains. Using conserved PCR primers for the amplification of the SSU gene, a structurally similar novel intron (sub-group IC1) was detected in only a few V. dahliae isolates. However, when intron-specific primers were used for the screening of a diverse collection of Verticillium isolates that originally failed to produce intron-containing SSU amplicons, most were found to contain one or both intron types, at variable rDNA repeat numbers. This marked heterogeneity was confirmed with qRT-PCR by testing rDNA copy numbers (varying from 39 to 70 copies per haploid genome) and intron copy ratios in selected isolates. Our results demonstrate that (a) IC1 group-I introns are not specific to V. longisporum within the Verticillium genus, (b) V. dahliae isolates of vegetative compatibility groups (VCGs) 4A and 6, which bear the novel intron at most of their rDNA repeats, are closely related, and (c) there is considerable intra-genomic heterogeneity for the presence or absence of introns among the ribosomal repeats. These findings underline that distributions of introns in the highly heterogeneous repetitive rDNA complex should always be verified with sensitive methods to avoid misleading conclusions for the phylogeny of fungi and other organisms.

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