UNITE: database for ITS-based molecular identification of fungi

http://unite.ut.ee

GenBank-fungal-ITS mirror + ~4,000 core sequences

~300,000 fungal ITS sequences (~200,000 of which full-length)

~50% identified to species level (~18,000 distinct Latin binomials)

http://unite.ut.ee

These days: more like a sequence management environment

Adds several layers of structure + searchability to GenBank data

"Species" names of the accession number type for all fungal OTUs

Stable over time => record properties for OTUs

Third-party annotation is powerful:

1,000 chimeras

3,500 other low-quality sequences

10,000 taxonomic reannotations

20,000 sequences annotated for interacting taxon

30,000 sequences annotated for country of origin

40,000 sequences annotated for EcM lineage

85,000 sequences annotated for isolation source

Revised tool to extract the SSU, ITS1, 5.8S, ITS2, and LSU from eukaryotic ITS sequences (and identify ITS sequences in metagenomes)

• Support for all known fungi, including Cantharellales + Zygomycota s.l.

• Support for ~20 groups of eukaryotes: fungi, plants, oomycetes, metazoa,green algae, red algae, ...

• Support for various - but not all - sequencing technologies

2012: tool to sort ITS sequences to eukaryotic group

(~20 groups of eukaryotes supported)

2012: revised tool for reverse complementary control of eukaryotic ITS sequences

Nearing completion: (true) probabilistic assignment of ITS sequences to fungal taxa

Based on Ovaskainen et al. 2010