Abstract
Two new species in the order Mucorales, Mucor velutinosus and Mucor ellipsoideus, isolated from human clinical specimens in the USA, are described and illustrated. The former species is similar to Mucor ramosissimus, from which it can be differentiated by its ability to grow at 37°C and produce verrucose sporangiospores. Mucor ellipsoideus is also able to grow and sporulate at 37°C like M. indicus, the nearest phylogenetic species in this study, however, the former has narrow ellipsoidal sporangiospores in contrast to the subglobose to ellipsoidal sporangiospores of M. indicus. Analysis of the sequences of the ITS and the D1–D2 regions of the rRNA genes confirmed the novelty of these species. The in vitro antifungal susceptibility of the new species showed that amphotericin B was active against all isolates and posaconazole and itraconazole showed low activity.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología grants CGL 2007-65669/BOS and CGL 2009- 08698/BOS. We thank Catalina Nuñez for technical assistance.
Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and the writing of the paper.
This paper was first published online on Early Online on 21 July 2010.