Characteristic of ITS fragment of rDNA of Rhodotorula mucilaginosa isolated from gastrointestinal tract of centenarian

Aim. The aim of the work was to analyse the primary structure of the ITS region of the ribosomal operon of the red yeast isolate Rhodotorula mucilaginosa S1 from the gastrointestinal tract of healthy centenarian compared to the available homological basidimycetous nucleotide sequences. Methods. In silico comparison of the ITS nucleotide sequences using NCBI server resources (BLAST programs and "Nucleotide" database) with the reference ITS-fragment of red yeast isolate was performed. Results. Almost 90 % of highly homologous to the reference ITS-fragment out of 800 selected sequences represented genera Rhodotorula and Rhodosporidium with the top hits for R. mucilaginosa strains PMM08-1716L, 3942L and 3684L. The most frequent nucleobases mismatches of ITS-fragments of GenBank’s R. mucilaginosa strains compared to the reference one were observed in the positions 541 (T/C) for 85 % of strains, and 129 (T/C) and 158 (G/A) for 26 % of strains. Conclusions. The primary structure of studied ITS region showed 100 % homology to R. mucilaginosa strains also isolated from humans and animals, as well as the most frequently mismatches for 129th, 158th and 541st nucleotides located in the spacers regions of the ribosomal operon. Keywords: ITS, rDNA, nucleotide sequence, red yeast, human GIT.