Abstract

A basidiomycetous yeast, strain E2A-C3-II, was isolated from a marine sponge (Hymeniacidon sp.) collected at a depth of 6 m in Fildes Bay, King George Island, Antarctica. The phylogenetic analysis revealed that the yeast isolated is related to Leucosporidium drummii, Leucosporidiella muscorum and to the Leucosporidium scottii group, including Leucosporidiella creatinivora and Leucosporidiella yakutica. The analysis of the nucleotide differences and the genetic distances of the D1/D2 domain of the LSU rDNA gene and 5.8S ITS regions support that strain E2A-C3-II represents a new species. The novel species can be distinguished from L. drummii by its ability to assimilate l-sorbose, l-rhamnose, lactose and ribitol. The maximum temperature for growth was 25 A degrees C. On the basis of morphological, biochemical and physiological characterization, and phylogenetic and nucleotide analysis, a novel basidiomycetous yeast species, Leucosporidium escuderoi f.a., sp. nov., is proposed. The type strain is E2A-C3-IIT (=CBS 12734(T) =CECT 13080(T)). The Mycobank (http://www.mycobank.org) accession number is MB 804654. The nucleotide sequences of D1/D2 domain of the LSU rDNA gene and 5.8S-ITS regions obtained in this work have been deposited in Genbank under the Accession numbers JN181009 and JN197600, respectively.