Building of an Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) Gene Dataset to Support the Italian Health Service in Mushroom Identification

Abstract

This study aims at building an ITS gene dataset to support the Italian Health Service in mushroom identification. The target species were selected among those mostly involved in regional (Tuscany) poisoning cases. For each target species, all the ITS sequences already deposited in GenBank and BOLD databases were retrieved and accurately assessed for quality and reliability by a systematic filtering process. Wild specimens of target species were also collected to produce reference ITS sequences. These were used partly to set up and partly to validate the dataset by BLAST analysis. Overall, 7270 sequences were found in the two databases. After filtering, 1293 sequences (17.8%) were discarded, with a final retrieval of 5977 sequences. Ninety-seven ITS reference sequences were obtained from 76 collected mushroom specimens: 15 of them, obtained from 10 species with no sequences available after the filtering, were used to build the dataset, with a final taxonomic coverage of 96.7%. The other 82 sequences (66 species) were used for the dataset validation. In most of the cases (n = 71; 86.6%) they matched with identity values ≥ 97–100% with the corresponding species. The dataset was able to identify the species involved in regional poisoning incidents. As some of these species are also involved in poisonings at the national level, the dataset may be used for supporting the National Health Service throughout the Italian territory. Moreover, it can support the official control activities aimed at detecting frauds in commercial mushroom-based products and safeguarding consumers.

Amanita Section Phalloideae Species in the Mediterranean Basin: Destroying Angels Reviewed

“…from Sweden [6]. Amatoxin-producing species, in most cases identified as Amanita phalloides (listed here among the 'destroying angels' because of its whitish forms: see below), are the most frequent cause of lethal intoxication by fungi in the USA [1], China [7], Bulgaria [8], Catalonia [9], Czech Republic [10], France [2,11], Northern Italy [12,13], Germany [14], South Korea [15], Switzerland [16], and Turkey [17].…”

Global diversity and biogeography of Lyophyllum inferred from amplicon datasets

“…However, integrating a large amount of information and reusing it as a unified resource for new issues is a powerful, energy-saving, and cost-effective method. Over the years, the available datasets have continued to grow, and novel databases and tools have been introduced, making querying global sequencing repositories easier (Delavaux et al, 2020;Giusti et al, 2021;Delavaux et al, 2022). In this study, we demonstrate that a dataset with more than 10 TB amplicon sequencing data allows us to easily explore the global potential species diversity of Lyophyllum.…”

Virulence of Beauveria sp. and Metarhizium sp. fungi towards fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda)

“…and Metarhizium spp. for comparison were obtained from the NCBI GenBank DNA database (Table 2 ) with the sequences having ≥ 97% identical sites (following the number of identical sites in previous studies; Izzo et al 2005 ; Smith et al 2007 ; Ryberg et al 2008 ; Giusti et al 2021 ) to the CSIRO fungal isolates. Visually re-aligned ITS sequences of Beauveria and Metarhizium spp.…”