Barcoding Fusarium solani: a global problem in threatened sea turtles species

Novel infectious diseases can be a leading cause of serious animal population decline and emerging pathogenic fungi seems to be driving some animal species extinct. Within the animal kingdom, sea turtles are one of the most threatened groups. They seem not to be an exemption of the rule and, recently, the Ascomycetous fungal pathogen Fusarium solani was described as the causal agent of mass mortalities in natural and artificial nests of the sea turtle species in Atlantic and Pacific beaches (Sarmiento-Ramírez et al, 2010). Fusarium solani appears to be a ¿species complex¿ (Zhang et al., 2006; O¿Donnel et al., 2000) and identification of this organism is troublesome. Thus, the purpose of our study was to molecularly characterize the isolates of F. solani obtained from diverse nesting areas of sea turtles and to select molecular makers allowing the identification and barcoding of these isolates. From 113 of sea turtles F. solani isolates, 29 were selected for testing ITS, SSU, LSU and IGS nrDNA, as well as rpb1 and rpb2 as barcoding loci. First results show that ITS, LSU and rpb2 are potential candidates to separate different isolates in F. solani. On the other hand, IGS seems to give geographical signal to separate isolates. However, the rate of successful PCR from SSU was very low and from rpb1 multiple bands were obtained with standard primers.