Detection of Chaetomium globosum, Ch. cochliodes and Ch. rectangulare during the Diversity Tracking of Mycotoxin-Producing Chaetomium-like Isolates Obtained in Buildings in Finland

Abstract

ISSN 1330-9862 minireview (FTB-3566) Extremely Halotolerant and Halophilic Fungi Inhabit Brine in Solar Salterns Around the Globe Nina Gunde-Cimerman1,2* and Polona Zalar1 1Department of Biology, Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia 2Centre of Excellence for Integrated Approaches in Chemistry and Biology of Proteins (CIPKeBiP), Jamova 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia Received: November 19, 2013 Accepted: March 31, 2014 Summary For a long time halotolerant and halophilic fungi have been known exclusively as con- taminants of food preserved with high concentrations of either salt or sugar. They were first reported in 2000 to be active inhabitants of hypersaline environments, when they were found in man-made solar salterns in Slovenia. Since then, they have been described in different salterns and salt lakes on three continents. The mycobiota that inhabit these natural hypersaline environments are composed of phylogenetically unrelated halotoler- ant, extremely halotolerant, and halophilic fungi, which are represented not only by spe- cies previously known only as food contaminants, but also by new and rare species. The dominant representatives are different species of black yeast-like and related melanized fungi of the genus Cladosporium, different species within the anamorphic Aspergillus and Penicillium, and the teleomorphic Emericella and Eurotium, certain species of non-melanized yeasts, and Wallemia spp. Until the discovery and description of indigenous saltern myco- biota, the physiological and molecular mechanisms related to salt tolerance in eukaryotic microorganisms were studied using salt-sensitive model organisms. The most studied eu- karyotic microorganism was Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which cannot adapt to hypersaline conditions. Species like Debaryomyces hansenii, Aureobasidum pullulans, Hortaea werneckii and Wallemia ichthyophaga, which have now been isolated globally from natural hypersaline en- vironments, represen