Abstract
Ravenelia esculenta Naras. and Thium. is a rust fungus, which infects mostly thorns, inflorescences, flowers and fruits of Acacia eburnea Willd. Aecial stages of the rust produce hypertrophy in infected parts. DNA of the rust fungus was isolated from aeciospores by ‘freeze thaw’ method. 18S rDNA was amplified and sequenced by automated DNA sequencer. BLAST of the sequence at NCBI retrieved 96 sequences producing significant alignments. Multiple sequence alignment of these sequences was done by ClustalW. Phylogenetic analysis was done by using MEGA 3.1. UPGMA Minimum Evolution tree with bootstrap value of 1000 replicates was constructed using these sequences. From phylogenetic tree it is observed that Ravenelia esculenta and the genus Gymnosporangium share a common ancestry, though Ravenelia esculenta is autoecious on angiosperm and the genus Gymnosporangium is heteroecious with pycnia, aecia on angiosperm and uredia, telia on gymnosperm. Two major clades are recognized which are based on the nature of aecial host (gymnosperm or angiosperm). These clades were also showing shift from pteridophytes to angiosperms as telial hosts. The tree can be interpreted in the other way also where there is separation of 14 families of Uredinales depending upon nature of teliospores, nature of aeciospores and structure of pycnia. These studies determine the phylogenetic position of Ravenelia esculenta among other rust fungi besides broad separation of Uredinales into two clades. These studies also show that there is phylogenetic correlation between molecular and morphological data. This is first report of DNA sequencing and phylogenetic positioning in genus Ravenelia from India.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Narsimhan MJ & Thirumalachar MJ (1961) Ravenelia esculenta, an edible rust fungus. Phytopath Z 41:97–102
Cummins GB & Hiratsuka Y (2003) “Illustrated genera of rust fungi” (Revised edition), APS Press, St Paul, Minnesota, USA
Swan EC & Taylor JW (1993) Higher taxa of basidiomycetes: An 18S rRNA gene perspective. Mycologia 85(6): 923–936
Vogler DR & Bruns TD (1998) Phylogenetic relationships among the pine stem rust fungi (Cronartium and Peridermium spp.). Mycologia 90(2):244–257
White TJ, Bruns T, Lee S & Taylor JW (1990) Amplification and sequencing of fungal ribosomal RNA genes for phylogenetics. In: M.A. Innis, D.H. Gelfand, J.J. Sninsky and T.J. White (ed.), PCR protocols: a guide to methods and applications. Academic Press, San Diego, California, pp 315–322
Thompson JD, Higgins DG & Gibson TJ (1994) CLUSTAL W: Improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, position specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice. Nucl Acids Res 22(22):4673–4680
Kumar S, Tamura K & Nei M (2004) MEGA3: Integrated software for Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis and sequence alignment. Brief in Bioinf 5:150–163
Kern FD (1973) A host survey of Gymnosporangium. Mycopathologia 51(1):99–101
Hernandez JR & Hennen JF (2003) Rust fungi causing galls, witches’ brooms and other abnormal plant growths in northwestern Argentina. Mycologia 95(4):728–755
Wingfield BD, Ericson L, Szaro T & Burdon JJ (2004) Phylogenetic pattern in the Uredinales. Australas Pl Pathol 33:327–335
Leppik EE (1953) Some viewpoints on the phylogeny of the rust fungi. I. Coniferous rusts. Mycologia 45:46–74
Peterson RS (1974) Rust fungi with Caeoma-like sori on conifers. Mycologia 66:242–255
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gandhe, K.R., Kuvalekar, A. Phylogenetic studies in Ravenelia esculenta and related rust fungi. Indian J Microbiol 47, 212–218 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12088-007-0042-6
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12088-007-0042-6