抄録
Penicillium is a taxonomically difficult genus of great importance in fields as diverse as food spoilage, biotechnology, biodeterioration, plant pathology and medicine. Traditional morphological approaches to taxonomy have been less than satisfactory, so in recent years a wide range of newer techniques-chemical, biochemical and physiologicalhave been applied. Taking a broad view of chemotaxonomy in this paper, the most successful of these approaches will be discussed. Valuable physiological tests have been measurements of colony diameters after growth under particular temperature or water activity conditions, or on selective substrates. The most useful new biochemical tools have been electrophoretic patterns of isoenzymes, of great value in subgenus Penicillium, and electrophoretic patterns of DNA and RNA after cleavage with specific nucleases. Chemical tests of most value include the use of ubiquinone systems as a broad measure of relatedness among groups of species, and secondary metabolite profiles, most useful at species and subspecies levels. Penicillium taxonomy is currently moving towards stability and consensus through international cooperation, involving the integration of all of these techniques. The newly established International Commission on Penicillium and Aspergillus will increasingly provide guidance in this direction.
