UNITE: a database providing web‐based methods for the molecular identification of ectomycorrhizal fungi

TLDR

Ectomycorrhizal fungi are typically identified by comparing ITS sequences to public databases, but these annotations are often incomplete or unreliable, and the UNITE database is available at http://unite.zbi.ee. UNITE was created as an open‑access database to address the annotation deficiencies in existing ITS repositories. UNITE contains well‑annotated ITS sequences from herbarium specimens with full identification, collector, and ecological data, and can be queried by taxon name, BLAST, or the galaxie phylogenetic tool, which aligns queries to generic alignments or BLAST matches. The current release includes 758 ITS sequences from 455 species across 67 genera, and is dedicated to reliable identification of ECM fungi.

Abstract

• Identification of ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi is often achieved through comparisons of ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences with accessioned sequences deposited in public databases. A major problem encountered is that annotation of the sequences in these databases is not always complete or trustworthy. In order to overcome this deficiency, we report on UNITE, an open-access database. • UNITE comprises well annotated fungal ITS sequences from well defined herbarium specimens that include full herbarium reference identification data, collector/source and ecological data. At present UNITE contains 758 ITS sequences from 455 species and 67 genera of ECM fungi. • UNITE can be searched by taxon name, via sequence similarity using blastn, and via phylogenetic sequence identification using galaxie. Following implementation, galaxie performs a phylogenetic analysis of the query sequence after alignment either to pre-existing generic alignments, or to matches retrieved from a blast search on the UNITE data. It should be noted that the current version of UNITE is dedicated to the reliable identification of ECM fungi. • The UNITE database is accessible through the URL http://unite.zbi.ee