The rpb2 gene represents a viable alternative molecular marker for the analysis of environmental fungal communities

Although the commonly used internal transcribed spacer region of rDNA (ITS) is well suited for taxonomic identification of fungi, the information on the relative abundance of taxa and diversity is negatively affected by the multicopy nature of rDNA and the existence of ITS paralogues. Moreover, due to high variability, ITS sequences cannot be used for phylogenetic analyses of unrelated taxa. The part of single-copy gene encoding the second largest subunit of RNA polymerase II (rpb2) was thus compared with first spacer of ITS as an alternative marker for the analysis of fungal communities in spruce forest topsoil, and their applicability was tested on a comprehensive mock community. In soil, rpb2 exhibited broad taxonomic coverage of the entire fungal tree of life including basal fungal lineages. The gene exhibited sufficient variation for the use in phylogenetic analyses and taxonomic assignments, although it amplifies also paralogues. The fungal taxon spectra obtained with rbp2 region ...尽管常用的核糖体DNA（rDNA）内转录间隔区（ITS）可有效用于真菌的分类鉴定，但由于rDNA具备多拷贝特性且存在ITS旁系同源序列，其在获取类群相对丰度与多样性信息时会受到负面影响。此外，由于序列变异性较高，ITS序列无法用于非相关类群的系统发育分析。为此，本研究将编码RNA聚合酶II第二大亚基的单拷贝基因片段（rpb2）与ITS第一间隔区进行对比，将其作为云杉林表层土壤真菌群落分析的备选分子标记，并在全面模拟群落中验证了二者的适用性。在土壤样本中，rpb2可覆盖整个真菌系统发育树的宽泛分类类群，涵盖真菌基部演化支。尽管该基因同样会扩增出旁系同源序列，但其具备足够的序列变异度以支持系统发育分析与分类注释。利用rpb2区域获取的真菌类群谱……