NEWSFLASH: Chip Cherry Update

The January, 2021 issue of the NCBG e-newsletter had an article about a fungus new to North Carolina, Leratiomyces ceres, or “Chip Cherry.” Herbarium Associate Dr. Van Cotter has gone molecular and offers this update:

  • The ITS* sequence of our chip cherry mushroom (Leratiomyces ceres) is a perfect match to L. ceres sequences in GenBank, confirming our identification. The South Africa chip cherry collection that I amplified ITS for also came back as a perfect match.
  • Regarding lineages and origin, there is not enough information in the ITS sequences to determine lineages within the species.

The news about this novel fungus to The Old North State prompted several iNaturalist observers to visit the wood-chipped areas around Coker Hall in the center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus

 

* “Internal transcribed spacer (ITS) is the spacer DNA situated between the small-subunit ribosomal RNA (rRNA) and large-subunit rRNA genes in the chromosome or the corresponding transcribed region in the polycistronic rRNA precursor transcript… Sequence comparison of the eukaryotic ITS regions is widely used in taxonomy and molecular phylogeny because of several favorable properties:

  • It is routinely amplified thanks to its small size associated to the availability of highly conserved flanking sequences.
  • It is easy to detect even from small quantities of DNA due to the high copy number of the rRNA clusters.
  • It undergoes rapid concerted evolution via unequal crossing-over and gene conversion. This promotes intra-genomic homogeneity of the repeat units, although high-throughput sequencing showed the occurrence of frequent variations within plant species.
  • It has a high degree of variation even between closely related species. This can be explained by the relatively low evolutionary pressure acting on such non-coding spacer sequences.” — Wikipedia contributors. “Internal transcribed spacer.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 29 Dec. 2020. Web. 31 Jan. 2021.