[Research advances and prospects in taxonomy of Monascus]

As a fermented rice product by the Monascus fungi, red yeast rice is widely used in the food, pharmaceutical, feed, and cosmetics industries. Since the discovery of monacolin K, a lipid-lowering active component, in the metabolites of red yeast rice in the 1970s, its research value has become increasingly prominent, ushering in a new phase of related studies. However, the taxonomic system of Monascus has long been controversial, which has hindered the fungal resource development and the industrial process standardization to a certain extent. This article systematically reviewed the major advances in the taxonomy and identification techniques of Monascus, highlighting the discrepancies among different classification systems. Specifically, significant differences existed between the classification systems by LI Zhong-qin and Hawksworth, while inconsistencies were also observed between the LI system and DNA sequence analysis results. Based on available evidence, a hypothesis was further proposed that "artificial domestication induces genetic morphological differentiation in Monascus", meaning that strains with the same genetic background may develop stable morphological variations during long-term fermentation and domestication. Multigene phylogenetic analyses(e.g., based on ITS, BenA, RPB2, and other genes) provided preliminary molecular support for this hypothesis, though the underlying mechanisms remain to be further validated through whole-genome comparisons, phenotype-associated gene identification, and other studies. On this basis, this paper proposed the construction of a four-dimensional classification model integrating morphomics, genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics to resolve the taxonomic units and phylogenetic relationships of Monascus more comprehensively and objectively. This taxonomic framework will provide important theoretical support for the scientific utilization, safety evaluation, and industrial application of Monascus resources.