Genetic variability of Brazilian strains of the Microcystis aeruginosa complex (Cyanobacteria/Cyanophyceae) using the phycocyanin intergenic spacer and flanking regions (cpcBA)
Md. Bittencourt-oliveira et al., Genetic variability of Brazilian strains of the Microcystis aeruginosa complex (Cyanobacteria/Cyanophyceae) using the phycocyanin intergenic spacer and flanking regions (cpcBA), J PHYCOLOGY, 37(5), 2001, pp. 810-818
Brazilian strains of Microcystis aeruginosa (Kutz.) Kutz. collected from fo
ur locations was examined and compared with several reference strains of M.
aeruginosa, M. viridis (A. Br.) Lemm. and M. wesenbergii (Kom.) Kom. in Ko
ndr. Brazilian strains were classified by morphological features and by com
parison of the nucleotide sequences of the cpcBA intergenic spacer and flan
king regions. Our results indicate that Brazilian strains classified as M.
aeruginosa are phylogenetically diverse compared with reference strains of
M. aeruginosa and that the current taxonomy underestimates genetic diversit
y within M. aeruginosa. The data also demonstrate that morphological criter
ia alone are inadequate to characterize Microcystis species. Although colon
ial characters were shown to vary considerably in culture, some genetic lin
eages demonstrated consistent cellular diameter ranges, indicating that cel
l size has value as a taxonomic character. The detection of six M. aerugino
sa genotypes in a single water body indicates that morphological approaches
can also seriously underestimate the diversity of Microcystis bloom popula
tions.