Browsing by Author "Benucci, Gian Maria Niccolò"
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Item Open Access CONSTAX2: Improved taxonomic classification of environmental DNA markers.(Bioinformatics (Oxford, England), 2021-05-07) Liber, Julian A; Bonito, Gregory; Benucci, Gian Maria NiccolòSummary
CONSTAX - the CONSensus TAXonomy classifier - was developed for accurate and reproducible taxonomic annotation of fungal rDNA amplicon sequences and is based upon a consensus approach of RDP, SINTAX, and UTAX algorithms. CONSTAX2 extends these features to classify prokaryotes as well as eukaryotes and incorporates BLAST-based classifiers to reduce classification errors. Additionally, CONSTAX2 implements a conda-installable command line tool with improved classification metrics, faster training, multithreading support, capacity to incorporate external taxonomic databases, and new isolate matching and high-level taxonomy tools, replete with documentation and example tutorials.Availability
CONSTAX2 is available at https://github.com/liberjul/CONSTAXv2, and is packaged for Linux and MacOS from Bioconda with use under the MIT License. A tutorial and documentation are available at https://constax.readthedocs.io/en/latest/.Supplementary information
Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.Item Open Access Mycoplasma-related endobacteria within Mortierellomycotina fungi: diversity, distribution and functional insights into their lifestyle.(The ISME journal, 2018-06) Desirò, Alessandro; Hao, Zhen; Liber, Julian A; Benucci, Gian Maria Niccolò; Lowry, David; Roberson, Robert; Bonito, GregoryBacterial interactions with animals and plants have been examined for over a century; by contrast, the study of bacterial-fungal interactions has received less attention. Bacteria interact with fungi in diverse ways, and endobacteria that reside inside fungal cells represent the most intimate interaction. The most significant bacterial endosymbionts that have been studied are associated with Mucoromycota and include two main groups: Burkholderia-related and Mycoplasma-related endobacteria (MRE). Examples of Burkholderia-related endobacteria have been reported in the three Mucoromycota subphyla. By contrast, MRE have only been identified in Glomeromycotina and Mucoromycotina. This study aims to understand whether MRE dwell in Mortierellomycotina and, if so, to determine their impact on the fungal host. We carried out a large-scale screening of 394 Mortierellomycotina strains and employed a combination of microscopy, molecular phylogeny, next-generation sequencing and qPCR. We detected MRE in 12 strains. These endosymbionts represent novel bacterial phylotypes and show evidence of recombination. Their presence in Mortierellomycotina demonstrates that MRE occur within fungi across Mucoromycota and they may have lived in their common ancestor. We cured the fungus of its endosymbionts with antibiotics and observed improved biomass production in isogenic lines lacking MRE, demonstrating that these endobacteria impose some fitness costs to their fungal host. Here we provided the first functional insights into the lifestyle of MRE. Our findings indicate that MRE may be antagonistic to their fungal hosts, and adapted to a non-lethal parasitic lifestyle in the mycelium of Mucoromycota. However, context-dependent adaptive benefits to their host at minimal cost cannot not be excluded. Finally, we conclude that Mortierellomycotina represent attractive model organisms for exploring interactions between MRE and fungi.