Summary
A procedure for the isolation of highly purified labeled and unlabeled DNAs from fungi representing three major groups has been described. The yield of DNA per g weight of freeze-dried mycelia is always higher inNeurospora crassa thanCoprinus lagopus andMucor azygospora. Thermal melting profiles show that theN. crassa andC. lagopus DNAs have one low G+C (32 mole percent) and another high G+C (52 mole percent) component, whereas theM. azygospora DNA has only one low G+C (38 mole percent) component. Based on DNA: DNA reassociation kinetics studies in this and other laboratories the genome size ofM. bacilliformis, N. crassa andC. lagopus was found to be 2×1010, 2.2×1010 and 2.5×1010 daltons respectively.N. crassa 32P DNA when hybridized withCoprinus andMucor DNAs gave an average of 14 and 11% homologies respectively but when hybridized with DNAs of other species of the same genus gave a homology of 83% on an average. When32PCoprinus DNA was hybridized withN. crassa andM. azygospora DNAs and average of 10 and 8% hybridization, respectively, was obtained. The DNA: DNA homology and thermal stability data indicate that the twoNeurospora species,N. intermedia andN. sitophila, are equally distant fromN. crassa and probably originated from the same ancestor in the evolutionary scale. On the basis of genome size comparison between the three fungi, theCoprinus (basidiomycetes) seems to be highly evolved whereasMucor (phycomycetes) is a relatively primitive one,Neurospora (ascomycetes) being somewhere in between these two groups in the evolutionary scale.
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Communicated by F. Kaudewitz
M. Ojha was visiting investigator from the Laboratory of Microbiology, Institute of Botany, University of Geneva, Switzerland. This research was supported in part by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Contract No. AT (40-1) 4182 and the Research Corporation, New York.
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Dutta, S.K., Ojha, M. Relatedness between major taxonomic groups of fungi based on the measurement of DNA nucleotide sequence homology. Molec. Gen. Genet. 114, 232–240 (1972). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01788892
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01788892