Figure 3
Phylogenetic placement of Group II/ A. minisclerotigenes -like isolates in Aspergillus section flavi. A 444 bp fragment of the β-tubulin gene was amplified from Group II/A. minisclerotigenes-like isolates and aligned with published Aspergillus section flavi sequences from [10], using A. leporis as an outgroup. Maximum likelihood trees were drawn using the PAUP 4.0 plug-in for Geneious R6.1.6; bootstrap support was obtained using 1000 replicates. Isolates sequenced in this study are indicated by a dot at the terminus of their branch: white = strains from culture collections; grey = Group II isolates from our collection; black = clinical Iranian isolates. Most of the Group II isolates from our collection along with Iranian clinical isolates 66041 and 66161 form a distinct cluster with 95% bootstrap support with isolates previously characterized as A. minisclerotigenes[10], including isolate FRR5309. Iranian clinical isolate 65728 groups away from this cluster with A. flavus and closely related species. Group II-like isolates LA 2–5 SB and BN038 G SGB group within the A. flavus cluster and with A. parvisclerotigenes, respectively. Accession numbers for sequences are listed after the name of the relevant isolate. *denotes FRR.