Abstract
This study reports on the discovery of heterothallic mating in Mucor irregularis (formerly Rhizomucor variabilis var. variabilis) and it extends the range of this species from Asia to the United States. We report on a case of primary cutaneous mucormycosis, involving the forearms of a cotton farmer from North Carolina, in which the infection was cured using amphotericin B therapy. Intraspecific crosses between the North Carolina strain DUMC 150.04 and M. irregularis CBS 103.93, the ex-type strain of R. variabilis var. variabilis from China, resulted in the formation of abundant fertile zygospores. By way of contrast, interspecific crosses between the North Carolina isolate and the ex-neotype strain of M. hiemalis NRRL 3624 resulted in the formation of putative azygospores by M. irregularis DUMC 150.04.
Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge the skilled technical assistance of Stacy Sink, Nathane Orwig for generating the DNA sequences in NCAUR's DNA core facility. We thank Dr Chaoyang Xu for translating Li et al. [Citation5], and Dr David Fang-Wei for assistance with the publication by Fu et al. [Citation4]. The mention of trade names or commercial products in this publication is solely for the purpose of providing specific information and does not imply recommendation or endorsement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.
Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.
This paper was first published online on Early Online on 1 April 2011.
Notice of correction
The iFirst version of this article published online ahead of print on 1 Apr 2011 contained errors in two lines in Table 1, please see below. This version shows the corrected table.
Table 1 Mucoralean isolates included in mating experiments.