MEI JIA LI's research while affiliated with Chinese Academy of Sciences and other places

Alternaria is a widely distributed fungal genus served as saprophytes, endophytes and pathogens. An Alternaria species was isolated from Vigna unguiculata in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. The strains were determined based on morphological characteristics and multi-locus phylogenetic analyses including the internal transcribed spacer of rDNA region (ITS), glyceraldehydes-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), RNA polymerase second largest subunit (RPB2) and translation-elongation factor 1 alpha (TEF1). The results indicated that it was a new species, which described and illustrated as Alternaria vignae sp. nov. in this study. Phylogenetic analyses showed that the species formed a well-supported clade (sect. Helianthiinficientes) close to A. helianthiinficiens.

A new species belonging to the genus Alternaria was isolated from the necrotic leaf spots of Brassica rapa subsp. pekinensis in Yuseong district, Daejeon, Korea. It is an occasional isolate, not an etiological agent, which is morphologically similar to A. broccoli-italicae, but differs in conidial size and conidiophore shape. Phylogenetic analysis using the sequence datasets of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of the rDNA, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (gpd), and plasma membrane ATPase genes showed that it is distantly related to A. broccoli-italicae and closely related to Alternaria species in the section Pseudoalternaria, which belonged to a clade basal to the section Infectoriae. Morphologically, the species is unique because it produces solitary conidia or conidial chains (two units), unlike the four members in the section Pseudoalternaria that produce conidia as short branched chains. It exhibits weak pathogenicity in the host plant. This report includes the description and illustration of A. brassicifolii as a new species.