First Report of Chrysosporium articulatum Isolated from Soil in Korea

A fungal strain designated as KNU-YC-1803F was isolated from a soil sample collected in Gogyeong-myeon, Yeongcheon-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do, Republic of Korea. To observe cultural and morphological characteristics, the strain was cultured on potato dextrose agar (PDA) and Sabouraud dextrose agar (SDA). On these media, colonies were white, cottony, and showed a pale yellow coloration on the reverse side. Microscopic observation revealed that aleurioconidia were hyaline, clavate to elongated-pyriform in shape, measuring 4.1–14.0 × 4.4–9.2 μm. Arthroconidia were abundantly produced in chains, cylindrical to navicular in shape, measuring 4.7–11.9 × 3.6–7.7 μm. These morphological characteristics were consistent with the genus Chrysosporium. For molecular identification, phylogenetic analyses were conducted using the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions and the large subunit (LSU) of nuclear ribosomal DNA. BLAST analysis revealed that the ITS regions sequence showed 100% similarity to Trichophyton verrucosum and 99.8% similarity to C. articulatum and Aphanoascus reticulisporus. The LSU sequence also exhibited high similarity to closely related taxa. In the phylogenetic tree based on concatenated ITS regions and LSU sequences, strain KNU-YC-1803F clustered with C. articulatum. Based on the cultural and morphological characteristics along with phylogenetic analyses, strain KNU-YC-1803F was identified as C. articulatum. This study represents the first report of C. articulatum isolated from soil in Korea.