Takashi Nakase's last tweet: What is the current direction of microbial taxonomy research?

Abstract

During the last few decades, type strains of most yeast species have been barcoded using the D1/D2 domain of their LSU rRNA gene and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region. Species identification using DNA sequences regarding conspecificity in yeasts has also been studied. Most yeast species can be identified according to the sequence divergence of their ITS region or a combination of the D1/D2 and ITS regions. Studies that have examined intraspecific diversity have used multilocus sequence analyses, whereas the marker regions used in this analysis vary depending upon taxa. D1/D2 domain and ITS region sequences have been used as barcodes to develop primers suitable for the detection of the biological diversity of environmental DNA and the microbiome. Using these barcode sequences, it is possible to identify relative lineages and infer their gene products and function, and how they adapt to their environment. If barcode sequence was not variable enough to identify a described species, one could investigate the other biological traits of these yeasts, considering geological distance, environmental circumstances and isolation of reproduction. This article is dedicated to late Dr Takashi Nakase (1939-2018).