Five new species of Inosperma from China: Morphological characteristics, phylogenetic analyses, and toxin detection

Sai-Nan Li; Fei Xu; Pan Long; Feng Liu; Ping Zhang; Yu-Guang Fan; Zuo-Hong Chen

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2022.1021583

Five new species of Inosperma from China: Morphological characteristics, phylogenetic analyses, and toxin detection

Front Microbiol. 2022 Oct 31:13:1021583. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.1021583. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Sai-Nan Li¹, Fei Xu², Pan Long¹, Feng Liu², Ping Zhang¹, Yu-Guang Fan³, Zuo-Hong Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ Mycology Laboratory, College of Life Sciences, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China.
² Department of Physical and Chemical, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Yinchuan, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Tropical Translational Medicine of Ministry of Education, Hainan Key Laboratory for R&D of Tropical Herbs, School of Pharmacy, Hainan Medical University, Haikou, China.

Abstract

Many species of Inosperma cause neurotoxic poisoning in humans after consumption around the world. However, the toxic species of Inosperma and its toxin content remain unclear. In the present study, we proposed five new Inosperma species from China, namely, I. longisporum, I. nivalellum, I. sphaerobulbosum, I. squamulosobrunneum, and I. squamulosohinnuleum. Morphological and molecular phylogenetic analyses based on three genes (ITS, nrLSU, rpb2) revealed that these taxa are independent species. A key to 17 species of Inosperma in China is provided. In addition, targeted screening for the most notorious mushroom neurotoxins, muscarine, psilocybin, ibotenic acid, and muscimol, in these five new species was performed by using ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS). Our results show that the neurotoxin contents in these five species varied: I. sphaerobulbosum contains none of the tested neurotoxins; I. nivalellum is muscarine positive; I. longisporum and I. squamulosohinnuleum contain both ibotenic acid and muscimol, and I. squamulosobrunneum only contains muscimol; psilocybin was not detected in these five new species.

Keywords: Inocybaceae; ibotenic acid; muscarine; muscimol; new species; phylogeny; psilocybin; taxonomy.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 31872616 and 31860009), the Biodiversity Survey and Assessment Project of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, China (Grant No. 2019HJ2096001006), and the Natural Science Foundation of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (Grant No. 2020AAC03437).