{"title":"The genomes of Scedosporium between environmental challenges and opportunism.","authors":"Francesco Venice, Federica Spina, Domenico Davolos, Stefano Ghignone, Giovanna Cristina Varese","doi":"10.1186/s43008-023-00128-3","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s43008-023-00128-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Emerging fungal pathogens are a global challenge for humankind. Many efforts have been made to understand the mechanisms underlying pathogenicity in bacteria, and OMICs techniques are largely responsible for those advancements. By contrast, our limited understanding of opportunism and antifungal resistance is preventing us from identifying, limiting and interpreting the emergence of fungal pathogens. The genus Scedosporium (Microascaceae) includes fungi with high tolerance to environmental pollution, whilst some species can be considered major human pathogens, such as Scedosporium apiospermum and Scedosporium boydii. However, unlike other fungal pathogens, little is known about the genome evolution of these organisms. We sequenced two novel genomes of Scedosporium aurantiacum and Scedosporium minutisporum isolated from extreme, strongly anthropized environments. We compared all the available Scedosporium and Microascaceae genomes, that we systematically annotated and characterized ex novo in most cases. The genomes in this family were integrated in a Phylum-level comparison to infer the presence of putative, shared genomic traits in filamentous ascomycetes with pathogenic potential. The analysis included the genomes of 100 environmental and clinical fungi, revealing poor evolutionary convergence of putative pathogenicity traits. By contrast, several features in Microascaceae and Scedosporium were detected that might have a dual role in responding to environmental challenges and allowing colonization of the human body, including chitin, melanin and other cell wall related genes, proteases, glutaredoxins and magnesium transporters. We found these gene families to be impacted by expansions, orthologous transposon insertions, and point mutations. With RNA-seq, we demonstrated that most of these anciently impacted genomic features responded to the stress imposed by an antifungal compound (voriconazole) in the two environmental strains S. aurantiacum MUT6114 and S. minutisporum MUT6113. Therefore, the present genomics and transcriptomics investigation stands on the edge between stress resistance and pathogenic potential, to elucidate whether fungi were pre-adapted to infect humans. We highlight the strengths and limitations of genomics applied to opportunistic human pathogens, the multifactoriality of pathogenicity and resistance to drugs, and suggest a scenario where pressures other than anthropic contributed to forge filamentous human pathogens.</p>","PeriodicalId":54345,"journal":{"name":"Ima Fungus","volume":"14 1","pages":"25"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2023-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10694956/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138483447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Detection and isolation of a new member of Burkholderiaceae-related endofungal bacteria from Saksenaea boninensis sp. nov., a new thermotolerant fungus in Mucorales.","authors":"Yusuke Takashima, Kohei Yamamoto, Yousuke Degawa, Yong Guo, Tomoyasu Nishizawa, Hiroyuki Ohta, Kazuhiko Narisawa","doi":"10.1186/s43008-023-00129-2","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s43008-023-00129-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Thermotolerance in Mucorales (Mucoromycotina) is one of the factors to be opportunistic pathogens, causing mucormycosis. Among thermotolerant mucoralean fungi, Burkholderiaceae-related endobacteria (BRE) are rarely found and the known range of hosts is limited to Rhizopus spp. The phylogenetic divergence of BRE has recently expanded in other fungal groups such as Mortierellaceae spp. (Mortierellomycotina); however, it remains unexplored in Mucorales. Here, we found a thermotolerant mucoralean fungus obtained from a litter sample collected from Haha-jima Island in the Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands, Japan. The fungus was morphologically, phylogenetically, and physiologically characterized and proposed as a new species, Saksenaea boninensis sp. nov. Besides the fungal taxonomy, we also found the presence of BRE in isolates of this species by diagnostic PCR amplification of the 16S rRNA gene from mycelia, fluorescence microscopic observations, and isolation of the bacterium in pure culture. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene of BRE revealed that it is distinct from all known BRE. The discovery of a culturable BRE lineage in the genus Saksenaea will add new insight into the evolutional origin of mucoralean fungus-BRE associations and emphasize the need to pay more attention to endofungal bacteria potentially associated with isolates of thermotolerant mucoralean fungi causing mucormycosis.</p>","PeriodicalId":54345,"journal":{"name":"Ima Fungus","volume":"14 1","pages":"24"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10666400/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138300628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Preliminary species diversity and community phylogenetics of wood-inhabiting basidiomycetous fungi in the Dabie Mountains, Central China reveal unexpected richness.","authors":"Xiang-Yang Liu, Shi-Liang Liu, Hao-Wen Wei, Xue-Wei Wang, Jia Yu, Shan Shen, Li-Wei Zhou","doi":"10.1186/s43008-023-00130-9","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s43008-023-00130-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Wood-inhabiting fungi have important economic values as well as playing a major ecological role in forest ecosystem cycles. The Dabie Mountains, at the junction of Henan, Hubei, and Anhui Provinces, Central China, provide an ideal climate and favorable niches for the speciation and diversification of various forms of life including fungi. We studied the species diversity and community phylogenetics of wood-inhabiting basidiomycetous fungi that revealed 175 wood-inhabiting basidiomycetous species, of which 20 represented unidentified species, based on morphological and phylogenetic analyses of 575 specimens collected from ten sampling sites. These species belonged to two classes, 11 orders, 42 families, and 106 genera of Basidiomycota, and included 12 edible species, 28 medicinal species, four poisonous species, and seven forest pathogens. Four types of fungal distribution pattern at the genus level were recognized for 65 genera, while another 41 genera could not be placed in any known distribution pattern. The five sampling sites in the eastern part of the Dabie Mountains had significantly higher species diversity and phylogenetic diversity of wood-inhabiting basidiomycetous fungi than those in the western part, and thus deserve priority in terms of conservation. The community of wood-inhabiting basidiomycetous fungi in the Dabie Mountains is generally affected by a combination of habitat filtering and competitive exclusion. This study provides a basis on which to build actions for the comprehensive recognition, utilization, and conservation of wood-inhabiting basidiomycetous fungi in the region.</p>","PeriodicalId":54345,"journal":{"name":"Ima Fungus","volume":"14 1","pages":"23"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10644440/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"107592806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ima FungusPub Date : 2023-11-06DOI: 10.1186/s43008-023-00127-4
Blanka Sokołowska, Małgorzata Orłowska, Alicja Okrasińska, Sebastian Piłsyk, Julia Pawłowska, Anna Muszewska
{"title":"What can be lost? Genomic perspective on the lipid metabolism of Mucoromycota.","authors":"Blanka Sokołowska, Małgorzata Orłowska, Alicja Okrasińska, Sebastian Piłsyk, Julia Pawłowska, Anna Muszewska","doi":"10.1186/s43008-023-00127-4","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s43008-023-00127-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mucoromycota is a phylum of early diverging fungal (EDF) lineages, of mostly plant-associated terrestrial fungi. Some strains have been selected as promising biotechnological organisms due to their ability to produce polyunsaturated fatty acids and efficient conversion of nutrients into lipids. Others get their lipids from the host plant and are unable to produce even the essential ones on their own. Following the advancement in EDF genome sequencing, we carried out a systematic survey of lipid metabolism protein families across different EDF lineages. This enabled us to explore the genomic basis of the previously documented ability to produce several types of lipids within the fungal tree of life. The core lipid metabolism genes showed no significant diversity in distribution, however specialized lipid metabolic pathways differed in this regard among different fungal lineages. In total 165 out of 202 genes involved in lipid metabolism were present in all tested fungal lineages, while remaining 37 genes were found to be absent in some of fungal lineages. Duplications were observed for 69 genes. For the first time we demonstrate that ergosterol is not being produced by several independent groups of plant-associated fungi due to the losses of different ERG genes. Instead, they possess an ancestral pathway leading to the synthesis of cholesterol, which is absent in other fungal lineages. The lack of diacylglycerol kinase in both Mortierellomycotina and Blastocladiomycota opens the question on sterol equilibrium regulation in these organisms. Early diverging fungi retained most of beta oxidation components common with animals including Nudt7, Nudt12 and Nudt19 pointing at peroxisome divergence in Dikarya. Finally, Glomeromycotina and Mortierellomycotina representatives have a similar set of desaturases and elongases related to the synthesis of complex, polyunsaturated fatty acids pointing at an ancient expansion of fatty acid metabolism currently being explored by biotechnological studies.</p>","PeriodicalId":54345,"journal":{"name":"Ima Fungus","volume":"14 1","pages":"22"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10629195/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71488940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ima FungusPub Date : 2023-10-06DOI: 10.1186/s43008-023-00121-w
Cobus M Visagie, Donato Magistà, Massimo Ferrara, Felipe Balocchi, Tuan A Duong, Ales Eichmeier, David Gramaje, Janneke Aylward, Scott E Baker, Irene Barnes, Sara Calhoun, Maria De Angelis, Jens C Frisvad, Eliska Hakalova, Richard D Hayes, Jos Houbraken, Igor V Grigoriev, Kurt LaButti, Catarina Leal, Anna Lipzen, Vivian Ng, Jasmyn Pangilinan, Jakub Pecenka, Giancarlo Perrone, Anja Piso, Emily Savage, Milan Spetik, Michael J Wingfield, Yu Zhang, Brenda D Wingfield
{"title":"IMA genome-F18 : The re-identification of Penicillium genomes available in NCBI and draft genomes for Penicillium species from dry cured meat, Penicillium biforme, P. brevicompactum, P. solitum, and P. cvjetkovicii, Pewenomyces kutranfy, Pew. lalenivora, Pew. tapulicola, Pew. kalosus, Teratosphaeria carnegiei, and Trichoderma atroviride SC1.","authors":"Cobus M Visagie, Donato Magistà, Massimo Ferrara, Felipe Balocchi, Tuan A Duong, Ales Eichmeier, David Gramaje, Janneke Aylward, Scott E Baker, Irene Barnes, Sara Calhoun, Maria De Angelis, Jens C Frisvad, Eliska Hakalova, Richard D Hayes, Jos Houbraken, Igor V Grigoriev, Kurt LaButti, Catarina Leal, Anna Lipzen, Vivian Ng, Jasmyn Pangilinan, Jakub Pecenka, Giancarlo Perrone, Anja Piso, Emily Savage, Milan Spetik, Michael J Wingfield, Yu Zhang, Brenda D Wingfield","doi":"10.1186/s43008-023-00121-w","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s43008-023-00121-w","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54345,"journal":{"name":"Ima Fungus","volume":"14 1","pages":"21"},"PeriodicalIF":5.2,"publicationDate":"2023-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10559472/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41159584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ima FungusPub Date : 2023-10-04DOI: 10.1186/s43008-023-00124-7
Flávia de F Costa, Rafael S C de Souza, Morgana F Voidaleski, Renata R Gomes, Guilherme F Reis, Bruna J F de S Lima, Giovanna Z Candido, Marlon R Geraldo, Jade M B Soares, Gabriela X Schneider, Edvaldo da S Trindade, Israel H Bini, Leandro F Moreno, Amanda Bombassaro, Flávio Queiroz-Telles, Roberto T Raittz, Yu Quan, Paulo Arruda, Derlene Attili-Angelis, Sybren de Hoog, Vania A Vicente
{"title":"Sugarcane: an unexpected habitat for black yeasts in Chaetothyriales.","authors":"Flávia de F Costa, Rafael S C de Souza, Morgana F Voidaleski, Renata R Gomes, Guilherme F Reis, Bruna J F de S Lima, Giovanna Z Candido, Marlon R Geraldo, Jade M B Soares, Gabriela X Schneider, Edvaldo da S Trindade, Israel H Bini, Leandro F Moreno, Amanda Bombassaro, Flávio Queiroz-Telles, Roberto T Raittz, Yu Quan, Paulo Arruda, Derlene Attili-Angelis, Sybren de Hoog, Vania A Vicente","doi":"10.1186/s43008-023-00124-7","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s43008-023-00124-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum, Poaceae) is cultivated on a large scale in (sub)tropical regions such as Brazil and has considerable economic value for sugar and biofuel production. The plant is a rich substrate for endo- and epiphytic fungi. Black yeasts in the family Herpotrichiellaceae (Chaetothyriales) are colonizers of human-dominated habitats, particularly those rich in toxins and hydrocarbon pollutants, and may cause severe infections in susceptible human hosts. The present study assessed the diversity of Herpotrichiellaceae associated with sugarcane, using in silico identification and selective isolation. Using metagenomics, we identified 5833 fungal sequences, while 639 black yeast-like isolates were recovered in vitro. In both strategies, the latter fungi were identified as members of the genera Cladophialophora, Exophiala, and Rhinocladiella (Herpotrichiellaceae), Cyphellophora (Cyphellophoraceae), and Knufia (Trichomeriaceae). In addition, we discovered new species of Cladophialophora and Exophiala from sugarcane and its rhizosphere. The first environmental isolation of Cladophialophora bantiana is particularly noteworthy, because this species up to now is exclusively known from the human host where it mostly causes fatal brain disease in otherwise healthy patients.</p>","PeriodicalId":54345,"journal":{"name":"Ima Fungus","volume":"14 1","pages":"20"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10552356/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41141559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ima FungusPub Date : 2023-09-15DOI: 10.1186/s43008-023-00126-5
Caio Ambrosio Leal-Dutra, Lok Man Yuen, Bruno Augusto Maciel Guedes, Marta Contreras-Serrano, Pedro Elias Marques, Jonathan Zvi Shik
{"title":"Evidence that the domesticated fungus Leucoagaricus gongylophorus recycles its cytoplasmic contents as nutritional rewards to feed its leafcutter ant farmers.","authors":"Caio Ambrosio Leal-Dutra, Lok Man Yuen, Bruno Augusto Maciel Guedes, Marta Contreras-Serrano, Pedro Elias Marques, Jonathan Zvi Shik","doi":"10.1186/s43008-023-00126-5","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s43008-023-00126-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Leafcutter ants farm a fungal cultivar (Leucoagaricus gongylophorus) that converts inedible vegetation into food that sustains colonies with up to millions of workers. Analogous to edible fruits of crops domesticated by humans, L. gongylophorus has evolved specialized nutritional rewards-swollen hyphal cells called gongylidia that package metabolites and are consumed by ant farmers. Yet, little is known about how gongylidia form, and thus how fungal physiology and ant provisioning collectively govern farming performance. We explored the process of gongylidium formation using advanced microscopy to image the cultivar at scales of nanometers, and both in vitro experiments and in silico analyses to examine the mechanisms of gongylidia formation when isolated from ant farmers. We first used transmission electron, fluorescence, and confocal microscopy imaging to see inside hyphal cells. This imaging showed that the cultivar uses a process called autophagy to recycle its own cellular material (e.g. cytosol, mitochondria) and then shuttles the resulting metabolites into a vacuole whose continual expansion displaces other organelles and causes the gongylidium cell's bulging bulb-like appearance. We next used scanning electron microscopy and light microscopy to link this intracellular rearrangement to the external branching patterns of gongylidium cells as they clump together into edible bundles called staphyla. We next confirmed that autophagy plays a critical role in gongylidium formation both: (1) in vitro as gongylidium suppression occurred when isolated fungal cultures were grown on media with autophagy inhibitors, and (2) in silico as differential transcript expression (RNA-seq) analyses showed upregulation of multiple autophagy gene isoforms in gongylidia relative to undifferentiated hyphae. While autophagy is a ubiquitous and often highly derived process across the tree of life, our study reveals a new role for autophagy as a mechanism of functional integration between ant farmers and their fungal crop, and potentially as a signifier of higher-level homeostasis between uniquely life-time committed ectosymbionts.</p>","PeriodicalId":54345,"journal":{"name":"Ima Fungus","volume":"14 1","pages":"19"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2023-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10503033/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10659964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Targeted sequencing analysis pipeline for species identification of human pathogenic fungi using long-read nanopore sequencing.","authors":"Nattapong Langsiri, Navaporn Worasilchai, Laszlo Irinyi, Piroon Jenjaroenpun, Thidathip Wongsurawat, Janet Jennifer Luangsa-Ard, Wieland Meyer, Ariya Chindamporn","doi":"10.1186/s43008-023-00125-6","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s43008-023-00125-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Among molecular-based techniques for fungal identification, Sanger sequencing of the primary universal fungal DNA barcode, the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region (ITS1, 5.8S, ITS2), is commonly used in clinical routine laboratories due to its simplicity, universality, efficacy, and affordability for fungal species identification. However, Sanger sequencing fails to identify mixed ITS sequences in the case of mixed infections. To overcome this limitation, different high-throughput sequencing technologies have been explored. The nanopore-based technology is now one of the most promising long-read sequencing technologies on the market as it has the potential to sequence the full-length ITS region in a single read. In this study, we established a workflow for species identification using the sequences of the entire ITS region generated by nanopore sequencing of both pure yeast isolates and mocked mixed species reads generated with different scenarios. The species used in this study included Candida albicans (n = 2), Candida tropicalis (n = 1), Nakaseomyces glabratus (formerly Candida glabrata) (n = 1), Trichosporon asahii (n = 2), Pichia kudriavzevii (formerly Candida krusei) (n = 1), and Cryptococcus neoformans (n = 1). Comparing various methods to generate the consensus sequence for fungal species identification, the results from this study indicate that read clustering using a modified version of the NanoCLUST pipeline is more sensitive than Canu or VSEARCH, as it classified species accurately with a lower abundance cluster of reads (3% abundance compared to 10% with VSEARCH). The modified NanoCLUST also reduced the number of classified clusters compared to VSEARCH, making the subsequent BLAST+ analysis faster. Subsampling of the datasets, which reduces the size of the datasets by approximately tenfold, did not significantly affect the identification results in terms of the identified species name, percent identity, query coverage, percentage of reads in the classified cluster, and the number of clusters. The ability of the method to distinguish mixed species within sub-populations of large datasets has the potential to aid computer analysis by reducing the required processing power. The herein presented new sequence analysis pipeline will facilitate better interpretation of fungal sequence data for species identification.</p>","PeriodicalId":54345,"journal":{"name":"Ima Fungus","volume":"14 1","pages":"18"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2023-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10483712/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10184386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ima FungusPub Date : 2023-09-05DOI: 10.1186/s43008-023-00123-8
Małgorzata Orłowska, Drishtee Barua, Sebastian Piłsyk, Anna Muszewska
{"title":"Fucose as a nutrient ligand for Dikarya and a building block of early diverging lineages.","authors":"Małgorzata Orłowska, Drishtee Barua, Sebastian Piłsyk, Anna Muszewska","doi":"10.1186/s43008-023-00123-8","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s43008-023-00123-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Fucose is a deoxyhexose sugar present and studied in mammals. The process of fucosylation has been the primary focus in studies relating to fucose in animals due to the presence of fucose in Lewis antigens. Very few studies have reported its presence in Fungi, mostly in Mucoromycotina. The constitution of 25% and 12% of this sugar in the carbohydrates of cell wall in the respective Umbelopsis and Mucorales strains boosts the need to bridge the gap of knowledge on fucose metabolism across the fungal tree of life. In the absence of a network map involving fucose proteins, we carried out an in-silico approach to construct the fucose metabolic map in Fungi. We analyzed the taxonomic distribution of 85 protein families in Fungi including diverse early diverging fungal lineages. The expression of fucose-related protein-coding genes proteins was validated with the help of transcriptomic data originating from representatives of early diverging fungi. We found proteins involved in several metabolic activities apart from fucosylation such as synthesis, transport and binding. Most of the identified protein families are shared with Metazoa suggesting an ancestral origin in Opisthokonta. However, the overall complexity of fucose metabolism is greater in Metazoa than in Fungi. Massive gene loss has shaped the evolutionary history of these metabolic pathways, leading to a repeated reduction of these pathways in most yeast-forming lineages. Our results point to a distinctive mode of utilization of fucose among fungi belonging to Dikarya and the early diverging lineages. We speculate that, while Dikarya used fucose as a source of nutrients for metabolism, the early diverging group of fungi depended on fucose as a building block and signaling compound.</p>","PeriodicalId":54345,"journal":{"name":"Ima Fungus","volume":"14 1","pages":"17"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2023-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10481521/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10177786","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ima FungusPub Date : 2023-08-18DOI: 10.1186/s43008-023-00122-9
Felipe Balocchi, Irene Barnes, Michael J Wingfield, Rodrigo Ahumada, Cobus M Visagie
{"title":"New Resinogalea species from Araucaria araucana resin in Chile and reclassification of the genus in the Cryptocaliciomycetidae.","authors":"Felipe Balocchi, Irene Barnes, Michael J Wingfield, Rodrigo Ahumada, Cobus M Visagie","doi":"10.1186/s43008-023-00122-9","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s43008-023-00122-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Araucaria araucana is an ancient conifer, native to the mountain ranges in Chile and Argentina. These trees host a large number of organisms, mainly insects, strongly or even exclusively associated with them. The recent emergence of a novel canker disease on A. araucana has emphasised the importance of fungi associated with these iconic trees and has resulted in the discovery of various new species. In this study, we considered the identity of an unknown calicioid fungus consistently found on resin on the branches of A. araucana. Preliminary phylogenetic analyses placed isolates in the recently described sub-class Cryptocaliciomycetidae, closest to Cryptocalicium blascoi. However, the morphology of the ascomata and its occurrence in a unique niche suggested that the closest relative could be Resinogalea humboldtensis (Bruceomycetaceae, incertae sedis), a fungus with similar sporing structures found on resin of Araucaria humboldtensis in New Caledonia. There are no living cultures or sequence data available for either R. humboldtensis or its supposed closest relative, Bruceomyces castoris, precluding sequence-based comparisons. Morphological comparisons of the sporing structures on A. araucana confirmed that the ascomatal morphology of our unknown calicioid fungus and R. humboldtensis are almost identical and resemble each other more so than B. castoris or Cr. blascoi. A phylogenetic analysis based on the small subunit (SSU), internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and large subunit (LSU) rDNA regions resolved our strains into two clades with Cr. blascoi as its closest relative. Further analyses applying the Genealogical Concordance Phylogenetic Species Recognition (GCPSR) based on ITS, mini chromosome maintenance protein complex (MCM7), RNA polymerase II second largest subunit (RPB2) and translation elongation factor 1-alpha (TEF) gene regions, confirmed that strains represent two new species. Based on our morphological observations and phylogenetic analyses, we introduce two new Resinogalea species, R. araucana and R. tapulicola, and reclassify the genus in the subclass Cryptocaliciomycetidae.</p>","PeriodicalId":54345,"journal":{"name":"Ima Fungus","volume":"14 1","pages":"16"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10439659/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10404570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}