Abstract

Agarum clathratum, brown algae, play important ecological roles in marine ecosystem, but can cause secondary environ-ment pollution when they pile up on the beach. In order to resolve the environment problem by A. clathratum, we focus to isolate and identify Penicillium because many species are well known to produce extracellular enzymes. A total of 32 Penicillium strains were isolated from A. clathratum sam-ples that collected from 13 sites along the mid-east coast of Korea in summer. They were identified based on morpho-logical characters and phylogenetic analysis using β-tubulin DNA sequences as well as a combined dataset of β-tubulin and calmodulin. A total of 32 strains were isolated and they were identified to 13 Penicillium species. The commonly iso-lated species were Penicillium citrinum, P. roseomaculatum, and Penicillium sp. Among 13 Penicillium species, four spe-cies – P. bilaiae, P. cremeogriseum, P. madriti, and P. rose-omaculatum – have not been previously recorded in Korea. For these four new species records to Korea, we provide mor-phological characteristics of each strain.

• Keywords: β-tubulin; calmodulin; marine environments; mor-phology; phylogenetic analysis