Abstract
This describes a new and reliable species identification and classification system for dermatophytes based on the cluster analysis of nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS1) DNA sequences. In this system, some phenotypically similar species construct a compact monophyleic cluster which seems to be a “species”. This ITS1 sequence based species is called an “ITS1-genospecies”. The classification of genospecies is a practical concept for DNA sequence based species identification. It is possible to perform species identification and/or strain typing of 25 major dermatophytes (anamorphic genera Trichophyton, Microsporum, Epidermophyton, and the teleomorphic genus Arthroderma), some of which are hard to identify from their morphological features, by demonstrating their dendrogram using this system.
