Abstract
The phylogenetic position of Gliocladium and its related taxa were investigated, using the neighbor-joining method of the sequences from internal transcribed spacers (ITS1 and ITS2) and 5.8S ribosomal DNA (rDNA). It was focused especially on the generic concept by comparing with the related genera such as Trichoderma, Hypocrea, Verticillium, Penicillium and Talaromyces. Gliocladium species and its related genus were divided into three groups by the phylogenetic analysis using the neighbor-joining method. The first group includes Penicillium-like strains such as Penicillium, Tararomyces, Verticillium and one species of Gliocladium (G. cibotii JCM 9203 and JCM 9206). Especially, Gliocladium cibotii JCM 9203 is thought to be the similar species with Verticillium bulbillosum JCM 9214. Between these two species, Gliocladium cibotii and Verticillium bulbillosum, the intraspecies concept needs to examined with culture condition. and morphological properties. The second group includes two species Verticillium, Verticillium tricorpus and Verticillium albo-atrum which extracted from the GenBank database in NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information). Trichoderma-like strains, such as Trichoderma, Hypocrea and several species of Gliocladium are included in the third group. Also, Gliocladium penicillioides IFO 5869 and Gliocladium catenulatum ATCC 10523 formed the subgroup of Trichoderma-like strains. The species of Gliocladium were dispersed in Trichoderma-like and Penicillinum-like group, and only one species of Gliocladium cihotii used in our study was located in Penicillium-like genus group. The species of Verticillium appeared in all three groups and the species of Trichoderma formed the monophylogeny with Hypocrea (telemorph). Also, Gliocladium virens was grouped with Trichoderma harzianum with a high bootstrap value, supporting that Gliocladium virens is to be placed in Trichoderma. The results suggest that Gliocladium is polyphyletic, and is more Trichoderma-like than Penicillium-like.