The variety arrhizus possesses two slightly differing copies of the lactate dehydrogenase gene while the var. delemar contains only a single copy, resulting in the production of lactic acid by var. arrhizus and of fumaric-malic acid by var. Erlotinib manufacturer delemar.[19] Genome sequencing of Rhizopus arrhizus var. delemar revealed a dynamic organization of the genome.[38] There is evidence for ancestral whole-genome duplication and numerous recent gene duplications suggesting duplications of genes to be a frequent event.[38] Studies by Min et al. [39] revealed different haploid chromosome numbers for strains now assigned to the same species, (e.g. for R. oligosporus and R. microsporus or R.

arrhizus and R. niveus) that could be explained by duplication events as well. It is also known for other species such as Aspergillus fumigatus that genomes of different individuals of the same species may differ in gene numbers because of duplications and losses.[40] Genomes of two strains of A. fumigatus included 2% of genes that were unique for one of the two strains.[40] Although this result has to be interpreted with care because genome sequence quality is still not high enough to detect all genes, it shows that the absence of buy PS-341 genes is not a priori a basis for separating species. The enzyme assays did not reveal any additional physiological difference between

var. arrhizus and var. delemar and there is no indication for differences in virulence. In general Rhizopus arrhizus is more frequently involved in human infection than R. microsporus. Compared to R. microsporus, R. arrhizus strains were more often positive for siderophore production and they possessed a higher activity for amylases and lipases.[23] Judging from its enzyme profile, R. arrhizus has a high potential to degrade both plant as well as animal material. Morphologically the varieties have been distinguished

on the basis of the position of swellings of the sporangiophore, the length of the sporangiospores, the structure of the rhizoids and the shape of the columella.[17] However, Gryganskyi et al. [20] showed that spore size measurements were insufficient to distinguish var. arrhizus from var. delemar. Sporangiospores of strains of a single variety may differ strongly in their size, while also intra-strain of variability can be high. In addition, sporangiospore size is strongly influenced by temperature and medium[41] and is consequently not considered appropriate to distinguish taxonomic entities. In the literature the var. delemar has mostly been used for strains involved in food production and the var. arrhizus was more often known as an opportunistic human pathogen. Our statistical analyses were based on a relatively small number of strains because 50% of the arrhizus strains and 65% of the delemar strains lack information on the source of isolation.