Characterisation of filamentous fungal diversity of Trichoderma genus isolated from marine sponge by sequencing ITS-rDNA and MALDI-TOF ICMS

[Excerpt] Filamentous fungi are ubiquitous organisms and can easily be isolated from a wide range of environment. Some efforts have been made to investigate microbial communities in marine sponges of eukaryotes using both approaches of conventional taxonomy (morphology) and molecular taxonomy (Passarini et al. 2011). The classification of some filamentous fungi taxa can be difficult to achieve based on these methods. Currently, Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Time-of-Flight Intact Cell Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-TOF ICMS) has been widely used to identify and characterise a large number of taxa of filamentous fungi (Santos et al. 2010). The aim of this study was to investigate the diversity of 33 Trichoderma isolated from the southern Atlantic Ocean marine sponge Dragmacidon reticulata using a polyphasic approach