ITS Region
Definition
Internal transcribed spacer region, flanking the 5.8S rRNA gene between the 18S and 28S subunits in fungi and plants. The ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 fragment (~550-700 bp) is the standard fungal barcode, curated in the UNITE database.
- Full name
- Internal transcribed spacer
- Location
- Flanks 5.8S rRNA gene, between 18S and 28S
- Standard fragment
- ITS1-5.8S-ITS2, ~550-700 bp
- Reference database
- UNITE
- Used for
- Fungal species barcoding
Common questions
Why is ITS the standard barcode for fungi rather than COI, as used in animals?+
The mitochondrial COI gene that works well as a universal barcode in animals does not vary consistently or amplify reliably across the fungal kingdom, so the fungal barcoding community adopted the ITS region as the formal standard marker instead.
What forensic role does fungal ITS barcoding play?+
It can identify fungal contaminants or fungal material found on evidence, such as mould growth used to help estimate a postmortem interval or fungi recovered from soil or plant evidence linking a scene to a location.
Related terms
- 16S rRNA
- The small-subunit ribosomal RNA gene in bacteria (~1,550 bp). The V3-V4 hypervariable region (~470 bp) is amplified with universal bacterial primers for...
- BOLD Systems
- Barcode of Life Data System (University of Guelph, Canada). Holds over 9 million COI reference barcodes linked to voucher specimens, with mandatory...
- COI (COX1)
- Cytochrome-c oxidase subunit I gene. The 658-base-pair Folmer fragment is the globally adopted barcode-of-life marker for animals, curated in BOLD Systems and...
- Cytochrome B (Cyt B)
- A mitochondrial protein-coding gene widely used in forensic species identification before COI barcoding was standardised. Still used because its reference database for...
- PCR-RFLP
- PCR followed by restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. A restriction enzyme cuts the amplicon at species-specific recognition sites; the resulting fragment pattern...
- SILVA
- Curated ribosomal RNA sequence database (Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Bremen). Provides quality-filtered 16S, 18S, 23S, and 28S reference alignments for...