Acrophialophora ellipsoidea, an Undescribed Species Isolated from Soil in Korea

A designated fungal isolate, KNU-US-1802E was isolated from the soil in Uiseong, Korea. To identify characteristics of the isolate, it was cultured on PDA media for 6 days at 35°C. Colonies on PDA are flat, light gray, dense, with entire margins; reverse dark gray to black, with white margins. Aerial mycelia were smooth-walled, hyaline and 40~42 mm diameter after 6 days at 35°C. Conidia were hyaline, one-celled, ellipsoidal to fusiform, forming long chains with average length x width of 5.0±0.3 × 2.9±0.2 μm. Molecular analysis indicates that the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region and partial beta-tubulin (tub2) gene sequence showed 100% and 99% similarities, respectively with Acrophialophora ellipsoidea CGMCC 3.15255 collected from China. Phylogenetic analysis by the neighbor-joining (NJ) method shows that the KNU-US-1802E was clustered with A. ellipsoidea CGMCC 3.15255 in a phylogenetic tree constructed using the concatenated sequences of ITS region and tub2 gene sequences with a high bootstrap value. Based on these findings, the isolate KNU-US-1802E was identified as Acrophialophora ellipsoidea, and this is the first report of this isolate in Korea.