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Balamurugan C, Steenwyk JL, Goldman GH, Rokas A. The evolution of the gliotoxin biosynthetic gene cluster in Penicillium fungi. G3 (Bethesda) 2024; 14:jkae063. [PMID: 38507596 PMCID: PMC11075534 DOI: 10.1093/g3journal/jkae063] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/27/2023] [Revised: 12/27/2023] [Accepted: 03/11/2024] [Indexed: 03/22/2024]
Abstract
Fungi biosynthesize diverse secondary metabolites, small organic bioactive molecules with key roles in fungal ecology. Fungal secondary metabolites are often encoded by physically clustered genes known as biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). Fungi in the genus Penicillium produce a cadre of secondary metabolites, some of which are useful (e.g. the antibiotic penicillin and the cholesterol-lowering drug mevastatin) and others harmful (e.g. the mycotoxin patulin and the immunosuppressant gliotoxin) to human affairs. Fungal genomes often also encode resistance genes that confer protection against toxic secondary metabolites. Some Penicillium species, such as Penicillium decumbens, are known to produce gliotoxin, a secondary metabolite with known immunosuppressant activity. To investigate the evolutionary conservation of homologs of the gliotoxin BGC and of genes involved in gliotoxin resistance in Penicillium, we analyzed 35 Penicillium genomes from 23 species. Homologous, lesser fragmented gliotoxin BGCs were found in 12 genomes, mostly fragmented remnants of the gliotoxin BGC were found in 21 genomes, whereas the remaining 2 Penicillium genomes lacked the gliotoxin BGC altogether. In contrast, broad conservation of homologs of resistance genes that reside outside the BGC across Penicillium genomes was observed. Evolutionary rate analysis revealed that BGCs with higher numbers of genes evolve slower than BGCs with few genes, suggestive of constraint and potential functional significance or more recent decay. Gene tree-species tree reconciliation analyses suggested that the history of homologs in the gliotoxin BGC across the genus Penicillium likely involved multiple duplications, losses, and horizontal gene transfers. Our analyses suggest that genes encoded in BGCs can have complex evolutionary histories and be retained in genomes long after the loss of secondary metabolite biosynthesis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Charu Balamurugan
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Howards Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
| | - Gustavo H Goldman
- Faculdade de Ciencias Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo CEP 14040-903, Brazil
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
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2
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Brown A, Steenwyk JL, Rokas A. Genome-wide patterns of non-coding and protein-coding sequence variation in the major fungal pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus. G3 (Bethesda) 2024:jkae091. [PMID: 38696662 DOI: 10.1093/g3journal/jkae091] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/05/2024] [Revised: 04/19/2024] [Accepted: 04/25/2024] [Indexed: 05/04/2024]
Abstract
A. fumigatus is a deadly fungal pathogen, responsible for >400,000 infections/year and high mortality rates. A. fumigatus strains exhibit variation in infection-relevant traits, including in their virulence. However, most A. fumigatus protein-coding genes, including those that modulate its virulence, are shared between A. fumigatus strains and closely related non-pathogenic relatives. We hypothesized that A. fumigatus genes exhibit substantial genetic variation in the non-coding regions immediately upstream to the start codons of genes, which could reflect differences in gene regulation between strains. To begin testing this hypothesis, we identified 5,812 single-copy orthologs across the genomes of 263 A. fumigatus strains. In general, A. fumigatus non-coding regions showed higher levels of sequence variation compared to their corresponding protein-coding regions. Focusing on 2,482 genes whose protein-coding sequence identity scores ranged between 75% and 99%, we identified 478 total genes with signatures of positive selection only in their non-coding regions and 65 total genes with signatures only in their protein-coding regions. 28 of the 478 non-coding regions and 5 of the 65 protein-coding regions under selection are associated with genes known to modulate A. fumigatus virulence. Non-coding region variation between A. fumigatus strains included single nucleotide polymorphisms and insertions or deletions of at least a few nucleotides. These results show that non-coding regions of A. fumigatus genes harbor greater sequence variation than protein-coding regions, raising the hypothesis that this variation may contribute to A. fumigatus phenotypic heterogeneity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alec Brown
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA
| | - Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA
- Howards Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA
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3
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Steenwyk JL, King N. The promise and pitfalls of synteny in phylogenomics. PLoS Biol 2024; 22:e3002632. [PMID: 38768403 PMCID: PMC11105162 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002632] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/22/2024] Open
Abstract
Reconstructing the tree of life remains a central goal in biology. Early methods, which relied on small numbers of morphological or genetic characters, often yielded conflicting evolutionary histories, undermining confidence in the results. Investigations based on phylogenomics, which use hundreds to thousands of loci for phylogenetic inquiry, have provided a clearer picture of life's history, but certain branches remain problematic. To resolve difficult nodes on the tree of life, 2 recent studies tested the utility of synteny, the conserved collinearity of orthologous genetic loci in 2 or more organisms, for phylogenetics. Synteny exhibits compelling phylogenomic potential while also raising new challenges. This Essay identifies and discusses specific opportunities and challenges that bear on the value of synteny data and other rare genomic changes for phylogenomic studies. Synteny-based analyses of highly contiguous genome assemblies mark a new chapter in the phylogenomic era and the quest to reconstruct the tree of life.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America
- Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America
| | - Nicole King
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America
- Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America
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4
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Opulente DA, LaBella AL, Harrison MC, Wolters JF, Liu C, Li Y, Kominek J, Steenwyk JL, Stoneman HR, VanDenAvond J, Miller CR, Langdon QK, Silva M, Gonçalves C, Ubbelohde EJ, Li Y, Buh KV, Jarzyna M, Haase MAB, Rosa CA, ČCadež N, Libkind D, DeVirgilio JH, Hulfachor AB, Kurtzman CP, Sampaio JP, Gonçalves P, Zhou X, Shen XX, Groenewald M, Rokas A, Hittinger CT. Genomic factors shape carbon and nitrogen metabolic niche breadth across Saccharomycotina yeasts. Science 2024; 384:eadj4503. [PMID: 38662846 DOI: 10.1126/science.adj4503] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/28/2023] [Accepted: 03/22/2024] [Indexed: 05/03/2024]
Abstract
Organisms exhibit extensive variation in ecological niche breadth, from very narrow (specialists) to very broad (generalists). Two general paradigms have been proposed to explain this variation: (i) trade-offs between performance efficiency and breadth and (ii) the joint influence of extrinsic (environmental) and intrinsic (genomic) factors. We assembled genomic, metabolic, and ecological data from nearly all known species of the ancient fungal subphylum Saccharomycotina (1154 yeast strains from 1051 species), grown in 24 different environmental conditions, to examine niche breadth evolution. We found that large differences in the breadth of carbon utilization traits between yeasts stem from intrinsic differences in genes encoding specific metabolic pathways, but we found limited evidence for trade-offs. These comprehensive data argue that intrinsic factors shape niche breadth variation in microbes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dana A Opulente
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- Biology Department, Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19085, USA
| | - Abigail Leavitt LaBella
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- North Carolina Research Center (NCRC), Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Kannapolis, NC 28081, USA
| | - Marie-Claire Harrison
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - John F Wolters
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Chao Liu
- College of Agriculture and Biotechnology and Centre for Evolutionary and Organismal Biology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
| | - Yonglin Li
- Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Microbial Signals and Disease Control, Integrative Microbiology Research Center, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China
| | - Jacek Kominek
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- LifeMine Therapeutics, Inc., Cambridge, MA 02140, USA
| | - Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
| | - Hayley R Stoneman
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO 80045, USA
| | - Jenna VanDenAvond
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Caroline R Miller
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Quinn K Langdon
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Margarida Silva
- UCIBIO, Department of Life Sciences, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal
- Associate Laboratory i4HB, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal
| | - Carla Gonçalves
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- UCIBIO, Department of Life Sciences, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal
- Associate Laboratory i4HB, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal
| | - Emily J Ubbelohde
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Yuanning Li
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Institute of Marine Science and Technology, Shandong University, Qingdao 266237, China
- Laboratory for Marine Biology and Biotechnology, Qingdao Marine Science and Technology Center, Qingdao 266237, China
| | - Kelly V Buh
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Martin Jarzyna
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- Graduate Program in Neuroscience and Department of Biology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA
| | - Max A B Haase
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences and Institute for Systems Genetics, NYU Langone Health, New York, NY 10016, USA
- Department of Mechanistic Cell Biology, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology, 44227 Dortmund, Germany
| | - Carlos A Rosa
- Departamento de Microbiologia, ICB, C.P. 486, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, 31270-901, Brazil
| | - Neža ČCadež
- Food Science and Technology Department, Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
| | - Diego Libkind
- Centro de Referencia en Levaduras y Tecnología Cervecera (CRELTEC), Instituto Andino Patagónico de Tecnologías Biológicas y Geoambientales (IPATEC), Universidad Nacional del Comahue, CONICET, CRUB, Quintral 1250, San Carlos de Bariloche, 8400, Río Negro, Argentina
| | - Jeremy H DeVirgilio
- Mycotoxin Prevention and Applied Microbiology Research Unit, National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, Agricultural Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Peoria, IL 61604, USA
| | - Amanda Beth Hulfachor
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Cletus P Kurtzman
- Mycotoxin Prevention and Applied Microbiology Research Unit, National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, Agricultural Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Peoria, IL 61604, USA
| | - José Paulo Sampaio
- UCIBIO, Department of Life Sciences, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal
- Associate Laboratory i4HB, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal
| | - Paula Gonçalves
- UCIBIO, Department of Life Sciences, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal
- Associate Laboratory i4HB, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal
| | - Xiaofan Zhou
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Microbial Signals and Disease Control, Integrative Microbiology Research Center, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China
| | - Xing-Xing Shen
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- College of Agriculture and Biotechnology and Centre for Evolutionary and Organismal Biology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
| | | | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Chris Todd Hittinger
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
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5
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Steenwyk JL, Balamurugan C, Raja HA, Gonçalves C, Li N, Martin F, Berman J, Oberlies NH, Gibbons JG, Goldman GH, Geiser DM, Houbraken J, Hibbett DS, Rokas A. Phylogenomics reveals extensive misidentification of fungal strains from the genus Aspergillus. Microbiol Spectr 2024; 12:e0398023. [PMID: 38445873 PMCID: PMC10986620 DOI: 10.1128/spectrum.03980-23] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/20/2023] [Accepted: 02/18/2024] [Indexed: 03/07/2024] Open
Abstract
Modern taxonomic classification is often based on phylogenetic analyses of a few molecular markers, although single-gene studies are still common. Here, we leverage genome-scale molecular phylogenetics (phylogenomics) of species and populations to reconstruct evolutionary relationships in a dense data set of 710 fungal genomes from the biomedically and technologically important genus Aspergillus. To do so, we generated a novel set of 1,362 high-quality molecular markers specific for Aspergillus and provided profile Hidden Markov Models for each, facilitating their use by others. Examining the resulting phylogeny helped resolve ongoing taxonomic controversies, identified new ones, and revealed extensive strain misidentification (7.59% of strains were previously misidentified), underscoring the importance of population-level sampling in species classification. These findings were corroborated using the current standard, taxonomically informative loci. These findings suggest that phylogenomics of species and populations can facilitate accurate taxonomic classifications and reconstructions of the Tree of Life.IMPORTANCEIdentification of fungal species relies on the use of molecular markers. Advances in genomic technologies have made it possible to sequence the genome of any fungal strain, making it possible to use genomic data for the accurate assignment of strains to fungal species (and for the discovery of new ones). We examined the usefulness and current limitations of genomic data using a large data set of 710 publicly available genomes from multiple strains and species of the biomedically, agriculturally, and industrially important genus Aspergillus. Our evolutionary genomic analyses revealed that nearly 8% of publicly available Aspergillus genomes are misidentified. Our work highlights the usefulness of genomic data for fungal systematic biology and suggests that systematic genome sequencing of multiple strains, including reference strains (e.g., type strains), of fungal species will be required to reduce misidentification errors in public databases.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Howards Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Charu Balamurugan
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Huzefa A. Raja
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA
| | - Carla Gonçalves
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Ningxiao Li
- Department of Plant Pathology, University of California, Davis, California, USA
- USDA-ARS, Salinas, California, USA
| | | | - Judith Berman
- Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel
| | - Nicholas H. Oberlies
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA
| | - John G. Gibbons
- Department of Food Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
- Molecular and Cellular Biology Graduate Program, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
- Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Graduate Program, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Gustavo H. Goldman
- Faculdade de Ciencias Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - David M. Geiser
- Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology, Penn State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Jos Houbraken
- Food and Indoor Mycology, Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute, Utrecht, The Netherlands
| | - David S. Hibbett
- Biology Department, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, Schloss-Wolfsbrunnenweg, Heidelberg, Germany
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6
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Haase MAB, Steenwyk JL, Boeke JD. Gene loss and cis-regulatory novelty shaped core histone gene evolution in the apiculate yeast Hanseniaspora uvarum. Genetics 2024; 226:iyae008. [PMID: 38271560 PMCID: PMC10917516 DOI: 10.1093/genetics/iyae008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/28/2023] [Revised: 01/17/2024] [Accepted: 01/18/2024] [Indexed: 01/27/2024] Open
Abstract
Core histone genes display a remarkable diversity of cis-regulatory mechanisms despite their protein sequence conservation. However, the dynamics and significance of this regulatory turnover are not well understood. Here, we describe the evolutionary history of core histone gene regulation across 400 million years in budding yeasts. We find that canonical mode of core histone regulation-mediated by the trans-regulator Spt10-is ancient, likely emerging between 320 and 380 million years ago and is fixed in the majority of extant species. Unexpectedly, we uncovered the emergence of a novel core histone regulatory mode in the Hanseniaspora genus, from its fast-evolving lineage, which coincided with the loss of 1 copy of its paralogous core histone genes. We show that the ancestral Spt10 histone regulatory mode was replaced, via cis-regulatory changes in the histone control regions, by a derived Mcm1 histone regulatory mode and that this rewiring event occurred with no changes to the trans-regulator, Mcm1, itself. Finally, we studied the growth dynamics of the cell cycle and histone synthesis in genetically modified Hanseniaspora uvarum. We find that H. uvarum divides rapidly, with most cells completing a cell cycle within 60 minutes. Interestingly, we observed that the regulatory coupling between histone and DNA synthesis was lost in H. uvarum. Our results demonstrate that core histone gene regulation was fixed anciently in budding yeasts, however it has greatly diverged in the Hanseniaspora fast-evolving lineage.
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Affiliation(s)
- Max A B Haase
- Institute for Systems Genetics and Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, NYU Langone Health, 435 E 30th St, New York, NY 10016, USA
- Department of Mechanistic Cell Biology, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology, Dortmund, Germany
| | - Jacob L Steenwyk
- Howards Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
| | - Jef D Boeke
- Institute for Systems Genetics and Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, NYU Langone Health, 435 E 30th St, New York, NY 10016, USA
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7
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Ye R, Biango-Daniels M, Steenwyk JL, Rokas A, Louw NL, Nardella R, Wolfe BE. Genomic, transcriptomic, and ecological diversity of Penicillium species in cheese rind microbiomes. Fungal Genet Biol 2024; 171:103862. [PMID: 38218228 DOI: 10.1016/j.fgb.2023.103862] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/30/2023] [Revised: 12/06/2023] [Accepted: 12/23/2023] [Indexed: 01/15/2024]
Abstract
Although Penicillium molds can have significant impacts on agricultural, industrial, and biomedical systems, the ecological roles of Penicillium species in many microbiomes are not well characterized. Here we utilized a collection of 35 Penicillium strains isolated from cheese rinds to broadly investigate the genomic potential for secondary metabolism in cheese-associated Penicillium species, the impact of Penicillium on bacterial community assembly, and mechanisms of Penicillium-bacteria interactions. Using antiSMASH, we identified 1558 biosynthetic gene clusters, 406 of which were mapped to known pathways, including several mycotoxins and antimicrobial compounds. By measuring bacterial abundance and fungal mRNA expression when culturing representative Penicillium strains with a cheese rind bacterial community, we observed divergent impacts of different Penicillium strains, from strong inhibitors of bacterial growth to those with no impact on bacterial growth or community composition. Through differential mRNA expression analyses, Penicillium strains demonstrated limited differential gene expression in response to the bacterial community. We identified a few shared responses between the eight tested Penicillium strains, primarily upregulation of nutrient metabolic pathways, but we did not identify a conserved fungal response to growth in a multispecies community. These results in tandem suggest high variation among cheese-associated Penicillium species in their ability to shape bacterial community development and highlight important ecological diversity within this iconic genus.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ruby Ye
- Department of Biology, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA
| | | | - Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences and Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Nicolas L Louw
- Department of Biology, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA
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O'Meara MJ, Rapala JR, Nichols CB, Alexandre AC, Billmyre RB, Steenwyk JL, Alspaugh JA, O'Meara TR. CryptoCEN: A Co-Expression Network for Cryptococcus neoformans reveals novel proteins involved in DNA damage repair. PLoS Genet 2024; 20:e1011158. [PMID: 38359090 PMCID: PMC10901339 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1011158] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/05/2024] [Revised: 02/28/2024] [Accepted: 01/30/2024] [Indexed: 02/17/2024] Open
Abstract
Elucidating gene function is a major goal in biology, especially among non-model organisms. However, doing so is complicated by the fact that molecular conservation does not always mirror functional conservation, and that complex relationships among genes are responsible for encoding pathways and higher-order biological processes. Co-expression, a promising approach for predicting gene function, relies on the general principal that genes with similar expression patterns across multiple conditions will likely be involved in the same biological process. For Cryptococcus neoformans, a prevalent human fungal pathogen greatly diverged from model yeasts, approximately 60% of the predicted genes in the genome lack functional annotations. Here, we leveraged a large amount of publicly available transcriptomic data to generate a C. neoformans Co-Expression Network (CryptoCEN), successfully recapitulating known protein networks, predicting gene function, and enabling insights into the principles influencing co-expression. With 100% predictive accuracy, we used CryptoCEN to identify 13 new DNA damage response genes, underscoring the utility of guilt-by-association for determining gene function. Overall, co-expression is a powerful tool for uncovering gene function, and decreases the experimental tests needed to identify functions for currently under-annotated genes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew J O'Meara
- Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America
| | - Jackson R Rapala
- Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America
| | - Connie B Nichols
- Departments of Medicine and Molecular Genetics/Microbiology; and Cell Biology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America
| | - A Christina Alexandre
- Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America
| | - R Blake Billmyre
- Departments of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences/Infectious Disease, College of Pharmacy/College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, United States of America
| | - Jacob L Steenwyk
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States of America
| | - J Andrew Alspaugh
- Departments of Medicine and Molecular Genetics/Microbiology; and Cell Biology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America
| | - Teresa R O'Meara
- Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America
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9
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Brown A, Steenwyk JL, Rokas A. Genome-wide patterns of non-coding sequence variation in the major fungal pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus. bioRxiv 2024:2024.01.08.574724. [PMID: 38260267 PMCID: PMC10802510 DOI: 10.1101/2024.01.08.574724] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/24/2024]
Abstract
A.fumigatus is a deadly fungal pathogen, responsible for >400,000 infections/year and high mortality rates. A. fumigatus strains exhibit variation in infection-relevant traits, including in their virulence. However, most A. fumigatus protein-coding genes, including those that modulate its virulence, are shared between A. fumigatus strains and closely related non-pathogenic relatives. We hypothesized that A. fumigatus genes exhibit substantial genetic variation in the non-coding regions immediately upstream to the start codons of genes, which could reflect differences in gene regulation between strains. To begin testing this hypothesis, we identified 5,812 single-copy orthologs across the genomes of 263 A. fumigatus strains. A. fumigatus non-coding regions showed higher levels of sequence variation compared to their corresponding protein-coding regions. Specifically, we found that 1,274 non-coding regions exhibited <75% nucleotide sequence similarity (compared to 928 protein-coding regions) and 3,721 non-coding regions exhibited between 75% and 99% similarity (compared to 2,482 protein-coding regions) across strains. Only 817 non-coding regions exhibited ≥99% sequence similarity compared to 2,402 protein-coding regions. By examining 2,482 genes whose protein-coding sequence identity scores ranged between 75% and 99%, we identified 478 total genes with signatures of positive selection only in their non-coding regions and 65 total genes with signatures only in their protein-coding regions. 28 of the 478 non-coding regions and 5 of the 65 protein-coding regions under selection are associated with genes known to modulate A. fumigatus virulence. Non-coding region variation between A. fumigatus strains included single nucleotide polymorphisms and insertions or deletions of at least a few nucleotides. These results show that non-coding regions of A. fumigatus genes harbor greater sequence variation than protein-coding regions, raising the hypothesis that this variation may contribute to A. fumigatus phenotypic heterogeneity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alec Brown
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Howards Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
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10
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Wang JJT, Steenwyk JL, Brem RB. Natural trait variation across Saccharomycotina species. FEMS Yeast Res 2024; 24:foae002. [PMID: 38218591 PMCID: PMC10833146 DOI: 10.1093/femsyr/foae002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/27/2023] [Revised: 10/13/2023] [Accepted: 01/12/2024] [Indexed: 01/15/2024] Open
Abstract
Among molecular biologists, the group of fungi called Saccharomycotina is famous for its yeasts. These yeasts in turn are famous for what they have in common-genetic, biochemical, and cell-biological characteristics that serve as models for plants and animals. But behind the apparent homogeneity of Saccharomycotina species lie a wealth of differences. In this review, we discuss traits that vary across the Saccharomycotina subphylum. We describe cases of bright pigmentation; a zoo of cell shapes; metabolic specialties; and species with unique rules of gene regulation. We discuss the genetics of this diversity and why it matters, including insights into basic evolutionary principles with relevance across Eukarya.
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Affiliation(s)
- Johnson J -T Wang
- Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
| | - Jacob L Steenwyk
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
| | - Rachel B Brem
- Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
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11
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Abstract
Genome-scale data and the development of novel statistical phylogenetic approaches have greatly aided the reconstruction of a broad sketch of the tree of life and resolved many of its branches. However, incongruence - the inference of conflicting evolutionary histories - remains pervasive in phylogenomic data, hampering our ability to reconstruct and interpret the tree of life. Biological factors, such as incomplete lineage sorting, horizontal gene transfer, hybridization, introgression, recombination and convergent molecular evolution, can lead to gene phylogenies that differ from the species tree. In addition, analytical factors, including stochastic, systematic and treatment errors, can drive incongruence. Here, we review these factors, discuss methodological advances to identify and handle incongruence, and highlight avenues for future research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L Steenwyk
- Howards Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Yuanning Li
- Institute of Marine Science and Technology, Shandong University, Qingdao, China
| | - Xiaofan Zhou
- Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Microbial Signals and Disease Control, Integrative Microbiology Research Centre, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Xing-Xing Shen
- Key Laboratory of Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects of Zhejiang Province, Institute of Insect Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
- Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, Heidelberg, Germany.
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12
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Howards Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States of America
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences and Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
| | - Gustavo H. Goldman
- Faculdade de Ciencias Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
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13
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Gonçalves C, Harrison MC, Steenwyk JL, Opulente DA, LaBella AL, Wolters JF, Zhou X, Shen XX, Groenewald M, Hittinger CT, Rokas A. Diverse signatures of convergent evolution in cacti-associated yeasts. bioRxiv 2023:2023.09.14.557833. [PMID: 37745407 PMCID: PMC10515907 DOI: 10.1101/2023.09.14.557833] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/26/2023]
Abstract
Many distantly related organisms have convergently evolved traits and lifestyles that enable them to live in similar ecological environments. However, the extent of phenotypic convergence evolving through the same or distinct genetic trajectories remains an open question. Here, we leverage a comprehensive dataset of genomic and phenotypic data from 1,049 yeast species in the subphylum Saccharomycotina (Kingdom Fungi, Phylum Ascomycota) to explore signatures of convergent evolution in cactophilic yeasts, ecological specialists associated with cacti. We inferred that the ecological association of yeasts with cacti arose independently ~17 times. Using machine-learning, we further found that cactophily can be predicted with 76% accuracy from functional genomic and phenotypic data. The most informative feature for predicting cactophily was thermotolerance, which is likely associated with duplication and altered evolutionary rates of genes impacting the cell envelope in several cactophilic lineages. We also identified horizontal gene transfer and duplication events of plant cell wall-degrading enzymes in distantly related cactophilic clades, suggesting that putatively adaptive traits evolved through disparate molecular mechanisms. Remarkably, multiple cactophilic lineages and their close relatives are emerging human opportunistic pathogens, suggesting that the cactophilic lifestyle-and perhaps more generally lifestyles favoring thermotolerance-may preadapt yeasts to cause human disease. This work underscores the potential of a multifaceted approach involving high throughput genomic and phenotypic data to shed light onto ecological adaptation and highlights how convergent evolution to wild environments could facilitate the transition to human pathogenicity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carla Gonçalves
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, United States of America
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Present address: Associate Laboratory i4HB—Institute for Health and Bioeconomy and UCIBIO—Applied Molecular Biosciences Unit, Department of Life Sciences, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal
- Present address: UCIBIO-i4HB, Departamento de Ciências da Vida, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal
| | - Marie-Claire Harrison
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, United States of America
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, United States of America
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Howards Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
| | - Dana A. Opulente
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institu te, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
- Biology Department, Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19085, USA
| | - Abigail L. LaBella
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, United States of America
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte NC 28223
| | - John F. Wolters
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institu te, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Xiaofan Zhou
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, United States of America
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Microbial Signals and Disease Control, Integrative Microbiology Research Center, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China
| | - Xing-Xing Shen
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, United States of America
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
- College of Agriculture and Biotechnology and Centre for Evolutionary & Organismal Biology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
| | | | - Chris Todd Hittinger
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institu te, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, United States of America
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
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14
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Opulente DA, Leavitt LaBella A, Harrison MC, Wolters JF, Liu C, Li Y, Kominek J, Steenwyk JL, Stoneman HR, VanDenAvond J, Miller CR, Langdon QK, Silva M, Gonçalves C, Ubbelohde EJ, Li Y, Buh KV, Jarzyna M, Haase MAB, Rosa CA, Čadež N, Libkind D, DeVirgilio JH, Beth Hulfachor A, Kurtzman CP, Sampaio JP, Gonçalves P, Zhou X, Shen XX, Groenewald M, Rokas A, Hittinger CT. Genomic and ecological factors shaping specialism and generalism across an entire subphylum. bioRxiv 2023:2023.06.19.545611. [PMID: 37425695 PMCID: PMC10327049 DOI: 10.1101/2023.06.19.545611] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 07/11/2023]
Abstract
Organisms exhibit extensive variation in ecological niche breadth, from very narrow (specialists) to very broad (generalists). Paradigms proposed to explain this variation either invoke trade-offs between performance efficiency and breadth or underlying intrinsic or extrinsic factors. We assembled genomic (1,154 yeast strains from 1,049 species), metabolic (quantitative measures of growth of 843 species in 24 conditions), and ecological (environmental ontology of 1,088 species) data from nearly all known species of the ancient fungal subphylum Saccharomycotina to examine niche breadth evolution. We found large interspecific differences in carbon breadth stem from intrinsic differences in genes encoding specific metabolic pathways but no evidence of trade-offs and a limited role of extrinsic ecological factors. These comprehensive data argue that intrinsic factors driving microbial niche breadth variation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dana A. Opulente
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA; Biology Department Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19085, USA
| | - Abigail Leavitt LaBella
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37232 USA; Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte NC 28223
| | - Marie-Claire Harrison
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA; Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - John F. Wolters
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Chao Liu
- College of Agriculture and Biotechnology and Centre for Evolutionary & Organismal Biology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
| | - Yonglin Li
- Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Microbial Signals and Disease Control, Integrative Microbiology Research Center, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China
| | - Jacek Kominek
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA; LifeMine Therapeutics, Inc., Cambridge, MA 02140, USA
| | - Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Howards Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA; Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA; Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Hayley R. Stoneman
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Jenna VanDenAvond
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Caroline R. Miller
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Quinn K. Langdon
- Laboratory of Genetics, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Margarida Silva
- UCIBIO, Department of Life Sciences, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal; Associate Laboratory i4HB, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal
| | - Carla Gonçalves
- UCIBIO, Department of Life Sciences, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal; Associate Laboratory i4HB, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal; Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA; Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA; Laboratory of Genetics, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, University of WisconsinMadison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Emily J. Ubbelohde
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Yuanning Li
- Institute of Marine Science and Technology, Shandong University, Qingdao 266237, China
| | - Kelly V. Buh
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Martin Jarzyna
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA; Graduate Program in Neuroscience and Department of Biology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA
| | - Max A. B. Haase
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA; Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences and Institute for Systems Genetics, NYU Langone Health, New York, NY 10016, USA
| | - Carlos A. Rosa
- Departamento de Microbiologia, ICB, C.P. 486, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, 31270-901, Brazil
| | - Neža Čadež
- Food Science and Technology Department, Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
| | - Diego Libkind
- Centro de Referencia en Levaduras y Tecnología Cervecera (CRELTEC), Instituto Andino Patagónico de Tecnologías Biológicas y Geoambientales (IPATEC), Universidad Nacional del Comahue, CONICET, CRUB, Quintral 1250, San Carlos de Bariloche, 8400, Río Negro, Argentina
| | - Jeremy H. DeVirgilio
- Mycotoxin Prevention and Applied Microbiology Research Unit, National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Peoria, IL 61604, USA
| | - Amanda Beth Hulfachor
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
| | - Cletus P. Kurtzman
- Mycotoxin Prevention and Applied Microbiology Research Unit, National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Peoria, IL 61604, USA
| | - José Paulo Sampaio
- UCIBIO, Department of Life Sciences, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal; Associate Laboratory i4HB, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal
| | - Paula Gonçalves
- UCIBIO, Department of Life Sciences, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal; Associate Laboratory i4HB, NOVA School of Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal
| | - Xiaofan Zhou
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA; Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Microbial Signals and Disease Control, Integrative Microbiology Research Center, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China
| | - Xing-Xing Shen
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA; College of Agriculture and Biotechnology and Centre for Evolutionary & Organismal Biology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
| | | | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA; Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Chris Todd Hittinger
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726, USA
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15
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Valero C, Pinzan CF, de Castro PA, van Rhijn N, Earle K, Liu H, Horta MAC, Kniemeyer O, Krüger T, Pschibul A, Coemert DN, Heinekamp T, Brakhage AA, Steenwyk JL, Mead ME, Rokas A, Filler SG, da Rosa-Garzon NG, Cabral H, Deljabe E, Bromley MJ, Angeli CB, Palmisano G, Ibrahim AS, Gago S, Dos Reis TF, Goldman GH. A phylogenetic approach to explore the Aspergillus fumigatus conidial surface-associated proteome and its role in pathogenesis. bioRxiv 2023:2023.08.22.553365. [PMID: 37662192 PMCID: PMC10473670 DOI: 10.1101/2023.08.22.553365] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/05/2023]
Abstract
Aspergillus fumigatus , an important pulmonary fungal pathogen causing several diseases collectively called aspergillosis, relies on asexual spores or conidia for initiating host infection. Here, we used a phylogenomic approach to compare proteins in the conidial surface of A. fumigatus , two closely related non-pathogenic species, Aspergillus fischeri and Aspergillus oerlinghausenensis , and the cryptic pathogen Aspergillus lentulus . After identifying 62 proteins uniquely expressed on the A. fumigatus conidial surface, we deleted 42 genes encoding conidial proteins. We found deletion of 33 of these genes altered susceptibility to macrophage killing, penetration and damage to epithelial cells, and cytokine production. Notably, a gene that encodes glycosylasparaginase, which modulates levels of the host pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-1β, is important for infection in an immunocompetent murine model of fungal disease. These results suggest that A. fumigatus conidial surface proteins and effectors are important for evasion and modulation of the immune response at the onset of fungal infection.
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16
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O’Meara MJ, Rapala JR, Nichols CB, Alexandre C, Billmyre RB, Steenwyk JL, Alspaugh JA, O’Meara TR. CryptoCEN: A Co-Expression Network for Cryptococcus neoformans reveals novel proteins involved in DNA damage repair. bioRxiv 2023:2023.08.17.553567. [PMID: 37645941 PMCID: PMC10462067 DOI: 10.1101/2023.08.17.553567] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 08/31/2023]
Abstract
Elucidating gene function is a major goal in biology, especially among non-model organisms. However, doing so is complicated by the fact that molecular conservation does not always mirror functional conservation, and that complex relationships among genes are responsible for encoding pathways and higher-order biological processes. Co-expression, a promising approach for predicting gene function, relies on the general principal that genes with similar expression patterns across multiple conditions will likely be involved in the same biological process. For Cryptococcus neoformans, a prevalent human fungal pathogen greatly diverged from model yeasts, approximately 60% of the predicted genes in the genome lack functional annotations. Here, we leveraged a large amount of publicly available transcriptomic data to generate a C. neoformans Co-Expression Network (CryptoCEN), successfully recapitulating known protein networks, predicting gene function, and enabling insights into the principles influencing co-expression. With 100% predictive accuracy, we used CryptoCEN to identify 13 new DNA damage response genes, underscoring the utility of guilt-by-association for determining gene function. Overall, co-expression is a powerful tool for uncovering gene function, and decreases the experimental tests needed to identify functions for currently under-annotated genes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew J. O’Meara
- Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
| | - Jackson R. Rapala
- Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
| | - Connie B. Nichols
- Departments of Medicine and Molecular Genetics/Microbiology; and Cell Biology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina, USA
| | - Christina Alexandre
- Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
| | - R. Blake Billmyre
- Departments of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences/Infectious Disease, College of Pharmacy/College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA
| | - Jacob L Steenwyk
- Howards Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
| | - J. Andrew Alspaugh
- Departments of Medicine and Molecular Genetics/Microbiology; and Cell Biology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina, USA
| | - Teresa R. O’Meara
- Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
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17
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Steenwyk JL, Knowles S, Bastos RW, Balamurugan C, Rinker D, Mead ME, Roberts CD, Raja HA, Li Y, Colabardini AC, de Castro PA, dos Reis TF, Canóvas D, Sanchez RL, Lagrou K, Torrado E, Rodrigues F, Oberlies NH, Zhou X, Goldman GH, Rokas A. Evolutionary origin, population diversity, and diagnostics for a cryptic hybrid pathogen. bioRxiv 2023:2023.07.03.547508. [PMID: 37461539 PMCID: PMC10350022 DOI: 10.1101/2023.07.03.547508] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 07/25/2023]
Abstract
Cryptic fungal pathogens pose significant identification and disease management challenges due to their morphological resemblance to known pathogenic species while harboring genetic and (often) infectionrelevant trait differences. The cryptic fungal pathogen Aspergillus latus, an allodiploid hybrid originating from Aspergillus spinulosporus and an unknown close relative of Aspergillus quadrilineatus within section Nidulantes, remains poorly understood. The absence of accurate diagnostics for A. latus has led to misidentifications, hindering epidemiological studies and the design of effective treatment plans. We conducted an in-depth investigation of the genomes and phenotypes of 44 globally distributed isolates (41 clinical isolates and three type strains) from Aspergillus section Nidulantes. We found that 21 clinical isolates were A. latus; notably, standard methods of pathogen identification misidentified all A. latus isolates. The remaining isolates were identified as A. spinulosporus (8), A. quadrilineatus (1), or A. nidulans (11). Phylogenomic analyses shed light on the origin of A. latus, indicating one or two hybridization events gave rise to the species during the Miocene, approximately 15.4 to 8.8 million years ago. Characterizing the A. latus pangenome uncovered substantial genetic diversity within gene families and biosynthetic gene clusters. Transcriptomic analysis revealed that both parental genomes are actively expressed in nearly equal proportions and respond to environmental stimuli. Further investigation into infection-relevant chemical and physiological traits, including drug resistance profiles, growth under oxidative stress conditions, and secondary metabolite biosynthesis, highlight distinct phenotypic profiles of the hybrid A. latus compared to its parental and closely related species. Leveraging our comprehensive genomic and phenotypic analyses, we propose five genomic and phenotypic markers as diagnostics for A. latus species identification. These findings provide valuable insights into the evolutionary origin, genomic outcome, and phenotypic implications of hybridization in a cryptic fungal pathogen, thus enhancing our understanding of the underlying processes contributing to fungal pathogenesis. Furthermore, our study underscores the effectiveness of extensive genomic and phenotypic analyses as a promising approach for developing diagnostics applicable to future investigations of cryptic and emerging pathogens.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Howards Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, VU Station B #35–1634, Nashville, TN 37235, United States of America
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Sonja Knowles
- Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA
| | - Rafael W. Bastos
- Faculdade de Ciencias Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
- Department of Microbiology and Parasitology, Bioscience Center, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal-RN, Brazil
| | - Charu Balamurugan
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, VU Station B #35–1634, Nashville, TN 37235, United States of America
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - David Rinker
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, VU Station B #35–1634, Nashville, TN 37235, United States of America
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Matthew E. Mead
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, VU Station B #35–1634, Nashville, TN 37235, United States of America
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Christopher D. Roberts
- Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA
| | - Huzefa A. Raja
- Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA
| | - Yuanning Li
- Institute of Marine Science and Technology, Shandong University, 72 Binhai Road, Qingdao 266237, China
| | - Ana Cristina Colabardini
- Faculdade de Ciencias Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Patrícia Alves de Castro
- Faculdade de Ciencias Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Thaila Fernanda dos Reis
- Faculdade de Ciencias Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - David Canóvas
- Departamento de Genética, Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Sevilla, Seville, Spain
| | - Rafael Luperini Sanchez
- Faculdade de Ciencias Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Katrien Lagrou
- Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Transplantation, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
- Department of Laboratory Medicine and National Reference Centre for Mycosis, University Hospitals Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
| | - Egídio Torrado
- Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), School of Medicine, University of Minho, 4715-495 Braga, Portugal; ICVS/3B’s-PT Government Associate Laboratory, 4715-495 Braga, Portugal
| | - Fernando Rodrigues
- Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), School of Medicine, University of Minho, 4715-495 Braga, Portugal; ICVS/3B’s-PT Government Associate Laboratory, 4715-495 Braga, Portugal
| | - Nicholas H. Oberlies
- Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA
| | - Xiaofan Zhou
- Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Microbial Signals and Disease Control, Integrative Microbiology Research Centre, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Gustavo H. Goldman
- Faculdade de Ciencias Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, VU Station B #35–1634, Nashville, TN 37235, United States of America
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
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18
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Drewell RA, Cormier TC, Steenwyk JL, Denis JS, Tabima J, Dresch J, Larochelle D. The Dictyostelium discoideum genome lacks significant DNA methylation and uncovers palindromic sequences as a source of false positives in bisulfite sequencing. NAR Genom Bioinform 2023; 5:lqad035. [PMID: 37081864 PMCID: PMC10111430 DOI: 10.1093/nargab/lqad035] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/14/2022] [Revised: 03/13/2023] [Accepted: 03/30/2023] [Indexed: 04/22/2023] Open
Abstract
DNA methylation, the addition of a methyl (CH3) group to a cytosine residue, is an evolutionarily conserved epigenetic mark involved in a number of different biological functions in eukaryotes, including transcriptional regulation, chromatin structural organization, cellular differentiation and development. In the social amoeba Dictyostelium, previous studies have shown the existence of a DNA methyltransferase (DNMA) belonging to the DNMT2 family, but the extent and function of 5-methylcytosine in the genome are unclear. Here, we present the whole genome DNA methylation profile of Dictyostelium discoideum using deep coverage replicate sequencing of bisulfite-converted gDNA extracted from post-starvation cells. We find an overall very low number of sites with any detectable level of DNA methylation, occurring at significant levels in only 303-3432 cytosines out of the ∼7.5 million total cytosines in the genome depending on the replicate. Furthermore, a knockout of the DNMA enzyme leads to no overall decrease in DNA methylation. Of the identified sites, significant methylation is only detected at 11 sites in all four of the methylomes analyzed. Targeted bisulfite PCR sequencing and computational analysis demonstrate that the methylation profile does not change during development and that these 11 cytosines are most likely false positives generated by protection from bisulfite conversion due to their location in hairpin-forming palindromic DNA sequences. Our data therefore provide evidence that there is no significant DNA methylation in Dictyostelium before fruiting body formation and identify a reproducible experimental artifact from bisulfite sequencing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Robert A Drewell
- Biology Department, Clark University, 950 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610, USA
| | - Tayla C Cormier
- Biology Department, Clark University, 950 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610, USA
| | - Jacob L Steenwyk
- Biology Department, Clark University, 950 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610, USA
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
| | - James St Denis
- Biology Department, Clark University, 950 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610, USA
| | - Javier F Tabima
- Biology Department, Clark University, 950 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610, USA
| | - Jacqueline M Dresch
- Biology Department, Clark University, 950 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610, USA
| | - Denis A Larochelle
- Biology Department, Clark University, 950 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610, USA
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19
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Mead ME, de Castro PA, Steenwyk JL, Gangneux JP, Hoenigl M, Prattes J, Rautemaa-Richardson R, Guegan H, Moore CB, Lass-Flörl C, Reizine F, Valero C, Van Rhijn N, Bromley MJ, Rokas A, Goldman GH, Gago S. COVID-19-Associated Pulmonary Aspergillosis Isolates Are Genomically Diverse but Similar to Each Other in Their Responses to Infection-Relevant Stresses. Microbiol Spectr 2023; 11:e0512822. [PMID: 36946762 PMCID: PMC10100753 DOI: 10.1128/spectrum.05128-22] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/15/2022] [Accepted: 02/25/2023] [Indexed: 03/23/2023] Open
Abstract
Secondary infections caused by the pulmonary fungal pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus are a significant cause of mortality in patients with severe coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19). Even though epithelial cell damage and aberrant cytokine responses have been linked to susceptibility to COVID-19-associated pulmonary aspergillosis (CAPA), little is known about the mechanisms underpinning copathogenicity. Here, we analyzed the genomes of 11 A. fumigatus isolates from patients with CAPA in three centers from different European countries. CAPA isolates did not cluster based on geographic origin in a genome-scale phylogeny of representative A. fumigatus isolates. Phenotypically, CAPA isolates were more similar to the A. fumigatus A1160 reference strain than to the Af293 strain when grown in infection-relevant stresses, except for interactions with human immune cells wherein macrophage responses were similar to those induced by the Af293 reference strain. Collectively, our data indicate that CAPA isolates are genomically diverse but are more similar to each other in their responses to infection-relevant stresses. A larger number of isolates from CAPA patients should be studied to better understand the molecular epidemiology of CAPA and to identify genetic drivers of copathogenicity and antifungal resistance in patients with COVID-19. IMPORTANCE Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-associated pulmonary aspergillosis (CAPA) has been globally reported as a life-threatening complication in some patients with severe COVID-19. Most of these infections are caused by the environmental mold Aspergillus fumigatus, which ranks third in the fungal pathogen priority list of the WHO. However, little is known about the molecular epidemiology of Aspergillus fumigatus CAPA strains. Here, we analyzed the genomes of 11 A. fumigatus isolates from patients with CAPA in three centers from different European countries, and carried out phenotypic analyses with a view to understanding the pathophysiology of the disease. Our data indicate that A. fumigatus CAPA isolates are genomically diverse but are more similar to each other in their responses to infection-relevant stresses.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew E. Mead
- Department of Biological Sciences and Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Patrícia Alves de Castro
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences and Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Jean-Pierre Gangneux
- University of Rennes, CHU Rennes, Inserm, EHESP, IRSET (Institut de recherche en santé, environnement et travail), Rennes, France
| | - Martin Hoenigl
- Division of Infectious Diseases, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria
- Biotech Med, Graz, Austria
| | - Juergen Prattes
- Division of Infectious Diseases, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria
| | - Riina Rautemaa-Richardson
- Mycology Reference Centre Manchester and Department of Infectious Diseases, Manchester University, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester, United Kingdom
- Division of Evolution, Infection and Genomics, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
| | - Hélène Guegan
- University of Rennes, CHU Rennes, Inserm, EHESP, IRSET (Institut de recherche en santé, environnement et travail), Rennes, France
| | - Caroline B. Moore
- Mycology Reference Centre Manchester and Department of Infectious Diseases, Manchester University, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester, United Kingdom
- Division of Evolution, Infection and Genomics, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
| | - Cornelia Lass-Flörl
- European Excellence Center for Medical Mycology (ECMM), Institute of Hygiene and Medical Microbiology, Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria
| | - Florian Reizine
- University of Rennes, CHU Rennes, Inserm, EHESP, IRSET (Institut de recherche en santé, environnement et travail), Rennes, France
- Medical Intensive Care Unit, Rennes University Hospital, Rennes, France
| | - Clara Valero
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil
- Division of Evolution, Infection and Genomics, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
- Manchester Fungal Infection Group, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
| | - Norman Van Rhijn
- Division of Evolution, Infection and Genomics, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
- Manchester Fungal Infection Group, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
| | - Michael J. Bromley
- Division of Evolution, Infection and Genomics, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
- Manchester Fungal Infection Group, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences and Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Gustavo H. Goldman
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Sara Gago
- Division of Evolution, Infection and Genomics, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
- Manchester Fungal Infection Group, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
| | - on behalf of the ECMM CAPA Study Group
- Department of Biological Sciences and Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil
- University of Rennes, CHU Rennes, Inserm, EHESP, IRSET (Institut de recherche en santé, environnement et travail), Rennes, France
- Division of Infectious Diseases, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria
- Biotech Med, Graz, Austria
- Mycology Reference Centre Manchester and Department of Infectious Diseases, Manchester University, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester, United Kingdom
- Division of Evolution, Infection and Genomics, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
- European Excellence Center for Medical Mycology (ECMM), Institute of Hygiene and Medical Microbiology, Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria
- Medical Intensive Care Unit, Rennes University Hospital, Rennes, France
- Manchester Fungal Infection Group, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
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20
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Sierra-Patev S, Min B, Naranjo-Ortiz M, Looney B, Konkel Z, Slot JC, Sakamoto Y, Steenwyk JL, Rokas A, Carro J, Camarero S, Ferreira P, Molpeceres G, Ruiz-Dueñas FJ, Serrano A, Henrissat B, Drula E, Hughes KW, Mata JL, Ishikawa NK, Vargas-Isla R, Ushijima S, Smith CA, Donoghue J, Ahrendt S, Andreopoulos W, He G, LaButti K, Lipzen A, Ng V, Riley R, Sandor L, Barry K, Martínez AT, Xiao Y, Gibbons JG, Terashima K, Grigoriev IV, Hibbett D. A global phylogenomic analysis of the shiitake genus Lentinula. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2023; 120:e2214076120. [PMID: 36848567 PMCID: PMC10013852 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2214076120] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/20/2022] [Accepted: 12/22/2022] [Indexed: 03/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Lentinula is a broadly distributed group of fungi that contains the cultivated shiitake mushroom, L. edodes. We sequenced 24 genomes representing eight described species and several unnamed lineages of Lentinula from 15 countries on four continents. Lentinula comprises four major clades that arose in the Oligocene, three in the Americas and one in Asia-Australasia. To expand sampling of shiitake mushrooms, we assembled 60 genomes of L. edodes from China that were previously published as raw Illumina reads and added them to our dataset. Lentinula edodes sensu lato (s. lat.) contains three lineages that may warrant recognition as species, one including a single isolate from Nepal that is the sister group to the rest of L. edodes s. lat., a second with 20 cultivars and 12 wild isolates from China, Japan, Korea, and the Russian Far East, and a third with 28 wild isolates from China, Thailand, and Vietnam. Two additional lineages in China have arisen by hybridization among the second and third groups. Genes encoding cysteine sulfoxide lyase (lecsl) and γ-glutamyl transpeptidase (leggt), which are implicated in biosynthesis of the organosulfur flavor compound lenthionine, have diversified in Lentinula. Paralogs of both genes that are unique to Lentinula (lecsl 3 and leggt 5b) are coordinately up-regulated in fruiting bodies of L. edodes. The pangenome of L. edodes s. lat. contains 20,308 groups of orthologous genes, but only 6,438 orthogroups (32%) are shared among all strains, whereas 3,444 orthogroups (17%) are found only in wild populations, which should be targeted for conservation.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Byoungnam Min
- U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA94720
| | | | - Brian Looney
- Biology Department, Clark University, Worcester, MA01610
| | - Zachary Konkel
- Department of Plant Pathology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH43210
| | - Jason C. Slot
- Department of Plant Pathology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH43210
| | - Yuichi Sakamoto
- Iwate Biotechnology Research Center, Kitakami, Iwate024-0003, Japan
| | - Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences and Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN37235
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences and Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN37235
| | - Juan Carro
- Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas “Margarita Salas,” Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, MadridE-28040, Spain
| | - Susana Camarero
- Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas “Margarita Salas,” Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, MadridE-28040, Spain
| | - Patricia Ferreira
- Department of Biochemistry and Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Zaragoza, 50009Zaragoza, Spain
- Institute of Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems, University of Zaragoza,50018Zaragoza, Spain
| | - Gonzalo Molpeceres
- Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas “Margarita Salas,” Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, MadridE-28040, Spain
| | - Francisco J. Ruiz-Dueñas
- Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas “Margarita Salas,” Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, MadridE-28040, Spain
| | - Ana Serrano
- Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas “Margarita Salas,” Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, MadridE-28040, Spain
| | - Bernard Henrissat
- DTU Bioengineering, Technical University of Denmark2800, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark
- Department of Biological Sciences, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah21589, Saudi Arabia
| | - Elodie Drula
- Architecture et Fonction des Macromolécules Biologiques, CNRS, Université13288, Marseille, France
- INRAE, UMR 1163, Biodiversité et Biotechnologie Fongiques13009, Marseille, France
| | - Karen W. Hughes
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN37996
| | - Juan L. Mata
- Department of Biology, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL36688
| | - Noemia Kazue Ishikawa
- Coordenação de Biodiversidade, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, Petrópolis, ManausAM 69067-375, Brazil
| | - Ruby Vargas-Isla
- Coordenação de Biodiversidade, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, Petrópolis, ManausAM 69067-375, Brazil
| | - Shuji Ushijima
- The Tottori Mycological Institute, Japan Kinoko Research Center Foundation, Tottori689-1125, Japan
| | - Chris A. Smith
- Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research, Auckland1072, New Zealand
| | - John Donoghue
- Northwest Mycological Consultants, Corvallis, OR97330
| | - Steven Ahrendt
- U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA94720
| | - William Andreopoulos
- U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA94720
| | - Guifen He
- U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA94720
| | - Kurt LaButti
- U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA94720
| | - Anna Lipzen
- U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA94720
| | - Vivian Ng
- U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA94720
| | - Robert Riley
- U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA94720
| | - Laura Sandor
- U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA94720
| | - Kerrie Barry
- U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA94720
| | - Angel T. Martínez
- Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas “Margarita Salas,” Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, MadridE-28040, Spain
| | - Yang Xiao
- Institute of Applied Mycology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei430070, China
| | - John G. Gibbons
- Department of Food Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA01003
| | - Kazuhisa Terashima
- The Tottori Mycological Institute, Japan Kinoko Research Center Foundation, Tottori689-1125, Japan
| | - Igor V. Grigoriev
- U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA94720
- Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA94720
| | - David Hibbett
- Biology Department, Clark University, Worcester, MA01610
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21
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Abstract
Tracing the history of evolution across time is a primary goal of evolutionary biology. The 2006 publication of a landmark study on relaxed phylogenetics in PLOS Biology enabled biologists to shed light on evolution's tempo and shaped the future of evolutionary studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Howards Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States of America
- * E-mail: (JLS); (AR)
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
- * E-mail: (JLS); (AR)
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22
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Balamurugan C, Steenwyk JL, Goldman GH, Rokas A. The evolution of the gliotoxin biosynthetic gene cluster in Penicillium fungi. bioRxiv 2023:2023.01.17.524442. [PMID: 36711793 PMCID: PMC9882216 DOI: 10.1101/2023.01.17.524442] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/22/2023]
Abstract
Fungi biosynthesize a diversity of secondary metabolites, small organic bioactive molecules that play diverse roles in fungal ecology. Fungal secondary metabolites are often encoded by physically clustered sets of genes known as biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). Fungi in the genus Penicillium produce diverse secondary metabolites that have been both useful (e.g., the antibiotic penicillin and the cholesterol-lowering drug mevastatin) and harmful (e.g., the mycotoxin patulin and the immunosuppressant gliotoxin) to human affairs. BGCs often also encode resistance genes that confer self-protection to the secondary metabolite-producing fungus. Some Penicillium species, such as Penicillium lilacinoechinulatum and Penicillium decumbens, are known to produce gliotoxin, a secondary metabolite with known immunosuppressant activity; however, an evolutionary characterization of the BGC responsible for gliotoxin biosynthesis among Penicillium species is lacking. Here, we examine the conservation of genes involved in gliotoxin biosynthesis and resistance in 35 Penicillium genomes from 23 species. We found homologous, less fragmented gliotoxin BGCs in 12 genomes, mostly fragmented remnants of the gliotoxin BGC in 21 genomes, whereas the remaining two Penicillium genomes lacked the gliotoxin BGC altogether. In contrast, we observed broad conservation of homologs of resistance genes that reside outside the BGC across Penicillium genomes. Evolutionary rate analysis revealed that BGCs with higher numbers of genes evolve slower than BGCs with few genes. Even though the gliotoxin BGC is fragmented to varying degrees in nearly all genomes examined, ancestral state reconstruction suggests that the ancestor of Penicillium species possessed the gliotoxin BGC. Our analyses suggest that genes that are part of BGCs can be retained in genomes long after the loss of secondary metabolite biosynthesis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Charu Balamurugan
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, United States of America
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
| | - Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, United States of America
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
- Howards Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
| | - Gustavo H. Goldman
- Faculdade de Ciencias Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, United States of America
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
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23
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Li Y, Liu H, Steenwyk JL, LaBella AL, Harrison MC, Groenewald M, Zhou X, Shen XX, Zhao T, Hittinger CT, Rokas A. Contrasting modes of macro and microsynteny evolution in a eukaryotic subphylum. Curr Biol 2022; 32:5335-5343.e4. [PMID: 36334587 PMCID: PMC10615371 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.10.025] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/07/2022] [Revised: 08/24/2022] [Accepted: 10/13/2022] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
Abstract
Examination of the changes in order and arrangement of homologous genes is key for understanding the mechanisms of genome evolution in eukaryotes. Previous comparisons between eukaryotic genomes have revealed considerable conservation across species that diverged hundreds of millions of years ago (e.g., vertebrates,1,2,3 bilaterian animals,4,5 and filamentous fungi6). However, understanding how genome organization evolves within and between eukaryotic major lineages remains underexplored. We analyzed high-quality genomes of 120 representative budding yeast species (subphylum Saccharomycotina) spanning ∼400 million years of eukaryotic evolution to examine how their genome organization evolved and to compare it with the evolution of animal and plant genome organization.7 We found that the decay of both macrosynteny (the conservation of homologous chromosomes) and microsynteny (the conservation of local gene content and order) was strongly associated with evolutionary divergence across budding yeast major clades. However, although macrosynteny decayed very fast, within ∼100 million years, the microsynteny of many genes-especially genes in metabolic clusters (e.g., in the GAL gene cluster8)-was much more deeply conserved both within major clades and across the subphylum. We further found that when genomes with similar evolutionary divergence times were compared, budding yeasts had lower macrosynteny conservation than animals and filamentous fungi but higher conservation than angiosperms. In contrast, budding yeasts had levels of microsynteny conservation on par with mammals, whereas angiosperms exhibited very low conservation. Our results provide new insight into the tempo and mode of the evolution of gene and genome organization across an entire eukaryotic subphylum.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuanning Li
- Institute of Marine Science and Technology, Shandong University, 72 Binhai Road, Qingdao 266237, China.
| | - Hongyue Liu
- Institute of Marine Science and Technology, Shandong University, 72 Binhai Road, Qingdao 266237, China
| | - Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B#35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA; Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B#35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Abigail L LaBella
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B#35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA; Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B#35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Marie-Claire Harrison
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B#35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA; Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B#35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Marizeth Groenewald
- Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute, Uppsalalaan 8, 3584 CT Utrecht, the Netherlands
| | - Xiaofan Zhou
- Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Microbial Signals and Disease Control, Integrative Microbiology Research Centre, South China Agricultural University, 483 Wushan Road, Guangzhou 520643, China
| | - Xing-Xing Shen
- Key Laboratory of Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects of Zhejiang Province, Institute of Insect Sciences, Zhejiang University, 866 Yuhangtang Road, Hangzhou 310058, China
| | - Tao Zhao
- State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Biology for Arid Areas, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Apple, College of Horticulture, Northwest A&F University, Taicheng Road 3, Yangling 712100, China
| | - Chris Todd Hittinger
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J.F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, 1552 University Avenue, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53726-4084, USA
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B#35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA; Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B#35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA; Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, Schloss-Wolfsbrunnenweg 35, 69118 Heidelberg, Germany.
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Steenwyk JL, Goltz DC, Buida TJ, Li Y, Shen XX, Rokas A. OrthoSNAP: A tree splitting and pruning algorithm for retrieving single-copy orthologs from gene family trees. PLoS Biol 2022; 20:e3001827. [PMID: 36228036 PMCID: PMC9595520 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001827] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/04/2021] [Revised: 10/25/2022] [Accepted: 09/13/2022] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Molecular evolution studies, such as phylogenomic studies and genome-wide surveys of selection, often rely on gene families of single-copy orthologs (SC-OGs). Large gene families with multiple homologs in 1 or more species-a phenomenon observed among several important families of genes such as transporters and transcription factors-are often ignored because identifying and retrieving SC-OGs nested within them is challenging. To address this issue and increase the number of markers used in molecular evolution studies, we developed OrthoSNAP, a software that uses a phylogenetic framework to simultaneously split gene families into SC-OGs and prune species-specific inparalogs. We term SC-OGs identified by OrthoSNAP as SNAP-OGs because they are identified using a splitting and pruning procedure analogous to snapping branches on a tree. From 415,129 orthologous groups of genes inferred across 7 eukaryotic phylogenomic datasets, we identified 9,821 SC-OGs; using OrthoSNAP on the remaining 405,308 orthologous groups of genes, we identified an additional 10,704 SNAP-OGs. Comparison of SNAP-OGs and SC-OGs revealed that their phylogenetic information content was similar, even in complex datasets that contain a whole-genome duplication, complex patterns of duplication and loss, transcriptome data where each gene typically has multiple transcripts, and contentious branches in the tree of life. OrthoSNAP is useful for increasing the number of markers used in molecular evolution data matrices, a critical step for robustly inferring and exploring the tree of life.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
- * E-mail: (JLS); (AR)
| | - Dayna C. Goltz
- Independent Researcher, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
| | - Thomas J. Buida
- Independent Researcher, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
| | - Yuanning Li
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
- Institute of Marine Science and Technology, Shandong University, Qingdao, China
| | - Xing-Xing Shen
- Ministry of Agriculture Key Lab of Molecular Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects, Institute of Insect Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
- Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, Heidelberg, Germany
- * E-mail: (JLS); (AR)
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25
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Brown A, Mead ME, Steenwyk JL, Goldman GH, Rokas A. Extensive non-coding sequence divergence between the major human pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus and its relatives. Front Fungal Biol 2022; 3:802494. [PMID: 36866034 PMCID: PMC9977105 DOI: 10.3389/ffunb.2022.802494] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/26/2021] [Accepted: 06/09/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022]
Abstract
Invasive aspergillosis is a deadly fungal disease; more than 400,000 patients are infected worldwide each year and the mortality rate can be as high as 50-95%. Of the ~450 species in the genus Aspergillus only a few are known to be clinically relevant, with the major pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus being responsible for ~50% of all invasive mold infections. Genomic comparisons between A. fumigatus and other Aspergillus species have historically focused on protein-coding regions. However, most A. fumigatus genes, including those that modulate its virulence, are also present in other pathogenic and non-pathogenic closely related species. Our hypothesis is that differential gene regulation - mediated through the non-coding regions upstream of genes' first codon - contributes to A. fumigatus pathogenicity. To begin testing this, we compared non-coding regions upstream of the first codon of single-copy orthologous genes from the two A. fumigatus reference strains Af293 and A1163 and eight closely related Aspergillus section Fumigati species. We found that these non-coding regions showed extensive sequence variation and lack of homology across species. By examining the evolutionary rates of both protein-coding and non-coding regions in a subset of orthologous genes with highly conserved non-coding regions across the phylogeny, we identified 418 genes, including 25 genes known to modulate A. fumigatus virulence, whose non-coding regions exhibit a different rate of evolution in A. fumigatus. Examination of sequence alignments of these non-coding regions revealed numerous instances of insertions, deletions, and other types of mutations of at least a few nucleotides in A. fumigatus compared to its close relatives. These results show that closely related Aspergillus species that vary greatly in their pathogenicity exhibit extensive non-coding sequence variation and identify numerous changes in non-coding regions of A. fumigatus genes known to contribute to virulence.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alec Brown
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
| | - Matthew E. Mead
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
| | - Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
| | - Gustavo H. Goldman
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
- Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
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26
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Steenwyk JL, Buida Iii TJ, Gonçalves C, Goltz DC, Morales G, Mead ME, LaBella AL, Chavez CM, Schmitz JE, Hadjifrangiskou M, Li Y, Rokas A. BioKIT: a versatile toolkit for processing and analyzing diverse types of sequence data. Genetics 2022; 221:6583183. [PMID: 35536198 PMCID: PMC9252278 DOI: 10.1093/genetics/iyac079] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/21/2022] [Accepted: 05/03/2022] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Bioinformatic analysis-such as genome assembly quality assessment, alignment summary statistics, relative synonymous codon usage, file format conversion, and processing and analysis-is integrated into diverse disciplines in the biological sciences. Several command-line pieces of software have been developed to conduct some of these individual analyses, but unified toolkits that conduct all these analyses are lacking. To address this gap, we introduce BioKIT, a versatile command line toolkit that has, upon publication, 42 functions, several of which were community-sourced, that conduct routine and novel processing and analysis of genome assemblies, multiple sequence alignments, coding sequences, sequencing data, and more. To demonstrate the utility of BioKIT, we conducted a comprehensive examination of relative synonymous codon usage across 171 fungal genomes that use alternative genetic codes, showed that the novel metric of gene-wise relative synonymous codon usage can accurately estimate gene-wise codon optimization, evaluated the quality and characteristics of 901 eukaryotic genome assemblies, and calculated alignment summary statistics for 10 phylogenomic data matrices. BioKIT will be helpful in facilitating and streamlining sequence analysis workflows. BioKIT is freely available under the MIT license from GitHub (https://github.com/JLSteenwyk/BioKIT), PyPi (https://pypi.org/project/jlsteenwyk-biokit/), and the Anaconda Cloud (https://anaconda.org/jlsteenwyk/jlsteenwyk-biokit). Documentation, user tutorials, and instructions for requesting new features are available online (https://jlsteenwyk.com/BioKIT).
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA.,Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | | | - Carla Gonçalves
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA.,Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA.,Associate Laboratory i4HB-Institute for Health and Bioeconomy, NOVA School of Science and Technology, NOVA University Lisbon, 2819-516 Caparica, Portugal.,UCIBIO-Applied Molecular Biosciences Unit, Department of Life Sciences, NOVA School of Science and Technology, NOVA University Lisbon, 2819-516 Caparica, Portugal
| | | | - Grace Morales
- Department of Pathology, Microbiology & Immunology, Center for Personalized Microbiology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN 37232, USA
| | - Matthew E Mead
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA.,Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Abigail L LaBella
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA.,Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Christina M Chavez
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA.,Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Jonathan E Schmitz
- Department of Pathology, Microbiology & Immunology, Center for Personalized Microbiology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN 37232, USA
| | - Maria Hadjifrangiskou
- Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA.,Department of Pathology, Microbiology & Immunology, Center for Personalized Microbiology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN 37232, USA
| | - Yuanning Li
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN 37235, USA.,Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
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27
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Steenwyk JL, Phillips MA, Yang F, Date SS, Graham TR, Berman J, Hittinger CT, Rokas A. An orthologous gene coevolution network provides insight into eukaryotic cellular and genomic structure and function. Sci Adv 2022; 8:eabn0105. [PMID: 35507651 PMCID: PMC9067921 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn0105] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/27/2021] [Accepted: 03/16/2022] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
The evolutionary rates of functionally related genes often covary. We present a gene coevolution network inferred from examining nearly 3 million orthologous gene pairs from 332 budding yeast species spanning ~400 million years of evolution. Network modules provide insight into cellular and genomic structure and function. Examination of the phenotypic impact of network perturbation using deletion mutant data from the baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which were obtained from previously published studies, suggests that fitness in diverse environments is affected by orthologous gene neighborhood and connectivity. Mapping the network onto the chromosomes of S. cerevisiae and Candida albicans revealed that coevolving orthologous genes are not physically clustered in either species; rather, they are often located on different chromosomes or far apart on the same chromosome. The coevolution network captures the hierarchy of cellular structure and function, provides a roadmap for genotype-to-phenotype discovery, and portrays the genome as a linked ensemble of genes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Megan A. Phillips
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Feng Yang
- Shmunis School of Biomedical and Cancer Research, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel
- Department of Pharmacology, Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China
| | - Swapneeta S. Date
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Todd R. Graham
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Judith Berman
- Shmunis School of Biomedical and Cancer Research, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel
| | - Chris Todd Hittinger
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J.F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
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28
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Bradley NP, Wahl KL, Steenwyk JL, Rokas A, Eichman BF. Resistance-Guided Mining of Bacterial Genotoxins Defines a Family of DNA Glycosylases. mBio 2022; 13:e0329721. [PMID: 35311535 PMCID: PMC9040887 DOI: 10.1128/mbio.03297-21] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/03/2021] [Accepted: 02/22/2022] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Unique DNA repair enzymes that provide self-resistance against therapeutically important, genotoxic natural products have been discovered in bacterial biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). Among these, the DNA glycosylase AlkZ is essential for azinomycin B production and belongs to the HTH_42 superfamily of uncharacterized proteins. Despite their widespread existence in antibiotic producers and pathogens, the roles of these proteins in production of other natural products are unknown. Here, we determine the evolutionary relationship and genomic distribution of all HTH_42 proteins from Streptomyces and use a resistance-based genome mining approach to identify homologs associated with known and uncharacterized BGCs. We find that AlkZ-like (AZL) proteins constitute one distinct HTH_42 subfamily and are highly enriched in BGCs and variable in sequence, suggesting each has evolved to protect against a specific secondary metabolite. As a validation of the approach, we show that the AZL protein, HedH4, associated with biosynthesis of the alkylating agent hedamycin, excises hedamycin-DNA adducts with exquisite specificity and provides resistance to the natural product in cells. We also identify a second, phylogenetically and functionally distinct subfamily whose proteins are never associated with BGCs, are highly conserved with respect to sequence and genomic neighborhood, and repair DNA lesions not associated with a particular natural product. This work delineates two related families of DNA repair enzymes-one specific for complex alkyl-DNA lesions and involved in self-resistance to antimicrobials and the other likely involved in protection against an array of genotoxins-and provides a framework for targeted discovery of new genotoxic compounds with therapeutic potential. IMPORTANCE Bacteria are rich sources of secondary metabolites that include DNA-damaging genotoxins with antitumor/antibiotic properties. Although Streptomyces produce a diverse number of therapeutic genotoxins, efforts toward targeted discovery of biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) producing DNA-damaging agents is lacking. Moreover, work on toxin-resistance genes has lagged behind our understanding of those involved in natural product synthesis. Here, we identified over 70 uncharacterized BGCs producing potentially novel genotoxins through resistance-based genome mining using the azinomycin B-resistance DNA glycosylase AlkZ. We validate our analysis by characterizing the enzymatic activity and cellular resistance of one AlkZ ortholog in the BGC of hedamycin, a potent DNA alkylating agent. Moreover, we uncover a second, phylogenetically distinct family of proteins related to Escherichia coli YcaQ, a DNA glycosylase capable of unhooking interstrand DNA cross-links, which differs from the AlkZ-like family in sequence, genomic location, proximity to BGCs, and substrate specificity. This work defines two families of DNA glycosylase for specialized repair of complex genotoxic natural products and generalized repair of a broad range of alkyl-DNA adducts and provides a framework for targeted discovery of new compounds with therapeutic potential.
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Affiliation(s)
- Noah P. Bradley
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Katherine L. Wahl
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Department of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Brandt F. Eichman
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Department of Biochemistry, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
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29
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de Castro PA, Colabardini AC, Moraes M, Horta MAC, Knowles SL, Raja HA, Oberlies NH, Koyama Y, Ogawa M, Gomi K, Steenwyk JL, Rokas A, Gonçales RA, Duarte-Oliveira C, Carvalho A, Ries LNA, Goldman GH. Regulation of gliotoxin biosynthesis and protection in Aspergillus species. PLoS Genet 2022; 18:e1009965. [PMID: 35041649 PMCID: PMC8797188 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1009965] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/30/2021] [Revised: 01/28/2022] [Accepted: 01/04/2022] [Indexed: 02/07/2023] Open
Abstract
Aspergillus fumigatus causes a range of human and animal diseases collectively known as aspergillosis. A. fumigatus possesses and expresses a range of genetic determinants of virulence, which facilitate colonisation and disease progression, including the secretion of mycotoxins. Gliotoxin (GT) is the best studied A. fumigatus mycotoxin with a wide range of known toxic effects that impair human immune cell function. GT is also highly toxic to A. fumigatus and this fungus has evolved self-protection mechanisms that include (i) the GT efflux pump GliA, (ii) the GT neutralising enzyme GliT, and (iii) the negative regulation of GT biosynthesis by the bis-thiomethyltransferase GtmA. The transcription factor (TF) RglT is the main regulator of GliT and this GT protection mechanism also occurs in the non-GT producing fungus A. nidulans. However, the A. nidulans genome does not encode GtmA and GliA. This work aimed at analysing the transcriptional response to exogenous GT in A. fumigatus and A. nidulans, two distantly related Aspergillus species, and to identify additional components required for GT protection. RNA-sequencing shows a highly different transcriptional response to exogenous GT with the RglT-dependent regulon also significantly differing between A. fumigatus and A. nidulans. However, we were able to observe homologs whose expression pattern was similar in both species (43 RglT-independent and 11 RglT-dependent). Based on this approach, we identified a novel RglT-dependent methyltranferase, MtrA, involved in GT protection. Taking into consideration the occurrence of RglT-independent modulated genes, we screened an A. fumigatus deletion library of 484 transcription factors (TFs) for sensitivity to GT and identified 15 TFs important for GT self-protection. Of these, the TF KojR, which is essential for kojic acid biosynthesis in Aspergillus oryzae, was also essential for virulence and GT biosynthesis in A. fumigatus, and for GT protection in A. fumigatus, A. nidulans, and A. oryzae. KojR regulates rglT, gliT, gliJ expression and sulfur metabolism in Aspergillus species. Together, this study identified conserved components required for GT protection in Aspergillus species. A. fumigatus secretes mycotoxins that are essential for its virulence and pathogenicity. Gliotoxin (GT) is a sulfur-containing mycotoxin, which is known to impair several aspects of the human immune response. GT is also toxic to different fungal species, which have evolved several GT protection strategies. To further decipher these responses, we used transcriptional profiling aiming to compare the response to GT in the GT producer A. fumigatus and the GT non-producer A. nidulans. This analysis allowed us to identify additional genes with a potential role in GT protection. We also identified 15 transcription factors (TFs) encoded in the A. fumigatus genome that are important for conferring resistance to exogenous gliotoxin. One of these TFs, KojR, which is essential for A. oryzae kojic acid production, is also important for virulence in A. fumigatus and GT protection in A. fumigatus, A. nidulans and A. oryzae. KojR regulates the expression of genes important for gliotoxin biosynthesis and protection, and sulfur metabolism. Together, this work identified conserved components required for gliotoxin protection in Aspergillus species.
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Affiliation(s)
- Patrícia Alves de Castro
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Ana Cristina Colabardini
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Maísa Moraes
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | | | - Sonja L. Knowles
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina United States of America
| | - Huzefa A. Raja
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina United States of America
| | - Nicholas H. Oberlies
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina United States of America
| | - Yasuji Koyama
- Noda Institute for Scientific Research, 338 Noda, Chiba, Japan
| | - Masahiro Ogawa
- Noda Institute for Scientific Research, 338 Noda, Chiba, Japan
| | - Katsuya Gomi
- Department of Bioindustrial Informatics and Genomics, Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
| | - Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
| | - Relber A. Gonçales
- Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), School of Medicine, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
- ICVS/3B’s—PT Government Associate Laboratory, Guimarães/Braga, Portugal
| | - Cláudio Duarte-Oliveira
- Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), School of Medicine, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
- ICVS/3B’s—PT Government Associate Laboratory, Guimarães/Braga, Portugal
| | - Agostinho Carvalho
- Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), School of Medicine, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
- ICVS/3B’s—PT Government Associate Laboratory, Guimarães/Braga, Portugal
| | - Laure N. A. Ries
- MRC Centre for Medical Mycology at the University of Exeter, Geoffrey Pope Building, Exeter, United Kingdom
- * E-mail: (LNAR); (GHG)
| | - Gustavo H. Goldman
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
- * E-mail: (LNAR); (GHG)
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30
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Phillips MA, Steenwyk JL, Shen XX, Rokas A. Examination of Gene Loss in the DNA Mismatch Repair Pathway and Its Mutational Consequences in a Fungal Phylum. Genome Biol Evol 2021; 13:evab219. [PMID: 34554246 PMCID: PMC8597960 DOI: 10.1093/gbe/evab219] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 09/17/2021] [Indexed: 12/12/2022] Open
Abstract
The DNA mismatch repair (MMR) pathway corrects mismatched bases produced during DNA replication and is highly conserved across the tree of life, reflecting its fundamental importance for genome integrity. Loss of function in one or a few MMR genes can lead to increased mutation rates and microsatellite instability, as seen in some human cancers. Although loss of MMR genes has been documented in the context of human disease and in hypermutant strains of pathogens, examples of entire species and species lineages that have experienced substantial MMR gene loss are lacking. We examined the genomes of 1,107 species in the fungal phylum Ascomycota for the presence of 52 genes known to be involved in the MMR pathway of fungi. We found that the median ascomycete genome contained 49/52 MMR genes. In contrast, four closely related species of obligate plant parasites from the powdery mildew genera Erysiphe and Blumeria, have lost between five and 21 MMR genes, including MLH3, EXO1, and DPB11. The lost genes span MMR functions, include genes that are conserved in all other ascomycetes, and loss of function of any of these genes alone has been previously linked to increased mutation rate. Consistent with the hypothesis that loss of these genes impairs MMR pathway function, we found that powdery mildew genomes with higher levels of MMR gene loss exhibit increased numbers of mononucleotide runs, longer microsatellites, accelerated sequence evolution, elevated mutational bias in the A|T direction, and decreased GC content. These results identify a striking example of macroevolutionary loss of multiple MMR pathway genes in a eukaryotic lineage, even though the mutational outcomes of these losses appear to resemble those associated with detrimental MMR dysfunction in other organisms.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Xing-Xing Shen
- Institute of Insect Sciences, Ministry of Agriculture Key Lab of Molecular Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects, College of Agriculture and Biotechnology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, USA
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31
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LaBella AL, Opulente DA, Steenwyk JL, Hittinger CT, Rokas A. Correction: Variation and selection on codon usage bias across an entire subphylum. PLoS Genet 2021; 17:e1009824. [PMID: 34570754 PMCID: PMC8476021 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1009824] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
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32
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dos Santos RAC, Mead ME, Steenwyk JL, Rivero-Menéndez O, Alastruey-Izquierdo A, Goldman GH, Rokas A. Examining Signatures of Natural Selection in Antifungal Resistance Genes Across Aspergillus Fungi. Front Fungal Biol 2021; 2:723051. [PMID: 37744093 PMCID: PMC10512362 DOI: 10.3389/ffunb.2021.723051] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2021] [Accepted: 08/16/2021] [Indexed: 09/26/2023]
Abstract
Certain Aspergillus fungi cause aspergillosis, a set of diseases that typically affect immunocompromised individuals. Most cases of aspergillosis are caused by Aspergillus fumigatus, which infects millions of people annually. Some closely related so-called cryptic species, such as Aspergillus lentulus, can also cause aspergillosis, albeit at lower frequencies, and they are also clinically relevant. Few antifungal drugs are currently available for treating aspergillosis and there is increasing worldwide concern about the presence of antifungal drug resistance in Aspergillus species. Furthermore, isolates from both A. fumigatus and other Aspergillus pathogens exhibit substantial heterogeneity in their antifungal drug resistance profiles. To gain insights into the evolution of antifungal drug resistance genes in Aspergillus, we investigated signatures of positive selection in 41 genes known to be involved in drug resistance across 42 susceptible and resistant isolates from 12 Aspergillus section Fumigati species. Using codon-based site models of sequence evolution, we identified ten genes that contain 43 sites with signatures of ancient positive selection across our set of species. None of the sites that have experienced positive selection overlap with sites previously reported to be involved in drug resistance. These results identify sites that likely experienced ancient positive selection in Aspergillus genes involved in resistance to antifungal drugs and suggest that historical selective pressures on these genes likely differ from any current selective pressures imposed by antifungal drugs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Renato Augusto Corrêa dos Santos
- Departamento de Ciências Farmacêuticas, Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
| | - Matthew E. Mead
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
| | - Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
| | - Olga Rivero-Menéndez
- Medical Mycology Reference Laboratory, National Center for Microbiology, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain
| | - Ana Alastruey-Izquierdo
- Medical Mycology Reference Laboratory, National Center for Microbiology, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain
| | - Gustavo Henrique Goldman
- Departamento de Ciências Farmacêuticas, Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
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Steenwyk JL, Rokas A. orthofisher: a broadly applicable tool for automated gene identification and retrieval. G3 (Bethesda) 2021; 11:6321954. [PMID: 34544141 PMCID: PMC8496211 DOI: 10.1093/g3journal/jkab250] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/07/2021] [Accepted: 07/06/2021] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
Abstract
Identification and retrieval of genes of interest from genomic data are an essential step for many bioinformatic applications. We present orthofisher, a command-line tool for automated identification and retrieval of genes with high sequence similarity to a query profile Hidden Markov Model sequence alignment across a set of proteomes. Performance assessment of orthofisher revealed high accuracy and precision during single-copy orthologous gene identification. orthofisher may be useful for assessing gene annotation quality, identifying single-copy orthologous genes for phylogenomic analyses, estimating gene copy number, and other evolutionary analyses that rely on identification and retrieval of homologous genes from genomic data. orthofisher comes complete with comprehensive documentation (https://jlsteenwyk.com/orthofisher/), is freely available under the MIT license, and is available for download from GitHub (https://github.com/JLSteenwyk/orthofisher), PyPi (https://pypi.org/project/orthofisher/), and the Anaconda Cloud (https://anaconda.org/jlsteenwyk/orthofisher).
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University , Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University , Nashville, TN 37235, USA
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Steenwyk JL, Mead ME, de Castro PA, Valero C, Damasio A, dos Santos RAC, Labella AL, Li Y, Knowles SL, Raja HA, Oberlies NH, Zhou X, Cornely OA, Fuchs F, Koehler P, Goldman GH, Rokas A. Genomic and Phenotypic Analysis of COVID-19-Associated Pulmonary Aspergillosis Isolates of Aspergillus fumigatus. Microbiol Spectr 2021; 9:e0001021. [PMID: 34106569 PMCID: PMC8552514 DOI: 10.1128/spectrum.00010-21] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/08/2021] [Accepted: 04/08/2021] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
The ongoing global pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is responsible for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), first described in Wuhan, China. A subset of COVID-19 patients has been reported to have acquired secondary infections by microbial pathogens, such as opportunistic fungal pathogens from the genus Aspergillus. To gain insight into COVID-19-associated pulmonary aspergillosis (CAPA), we analyzed the genomes and characterized the phenotypic profiles of four CAPA isolates of Aspergillus fumigatus obtained from patients treated in the area of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. By examining the mutational spectrum of single nucleotide polymorphisms, insertion-deletion polymorphisms, and copy number variants among 206 genes known to modulate A. fumigatus virulence, we found that CAPA isolate genomes do not exhibit significant differences from the genome of the Af293 reference strain. By examining a number of factors, including virulence in an invertebrate moth model, growth in the presence of osmotic, cell wall, and oxidative stressors, secondary metabolite biosynthesis, and the MIC of antifungal drugs, we found that CAPA isolates were generally, but not always, similar to A. fumigatus reference strains Af293 and CEA17. Notably, CAPA isolate D had more putative loss-of-function mutations in genes known to increase virulence when deleted. Moreover, CAPA isolate D was significantly more virulent than the other three CAPA isolates and the A. fumigatus reference strains Af293 and CEA17, but similarly virulent to two other clinical strains of A. fumigatus. These findings expand our understanding of the genomic and phenotypic characteristics of isolates that cause CAPA. IMPORTANCE The global pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the etiological agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has already killed millions of people. COVID-19 patient outcome can be further complicated by secondary infections, such as COVID-19-associated pulmonary aspergillosis (CAPA). CAPA is caused by Aspergillus fungal pathogens, but there is little information about the genomic and phenotypic characteristics of CAPA isolates. We conducted genome sequencing and extensive phenotyping of four CAPA isolates of Aspergillus fumigatus from Germany. We found that CAPA isolates were often, but not always, similar to other reference strains of A. fumigatus across 206 genetic determinants of infection-relevant phenotypes, including virulence. For example, CAPA isolate D was more virulent than other CAPA isolates and reference strains in an invertebrate model of fungal disease, but similarly virulent to two other clinical strains. These results expand our understanding of COVID-19-associated pulmonary aspergillosis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Matthew E. Mead
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Patrícia Alves de Castro
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Clara Valero
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - André Damasio
- Institute of Biology, University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas-SP, Brazil
- Experimental Medicine Research Cluster (EMRC), University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas-SP, Brazil
| | - Renato A. C. dos Santos
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Abigail L. Labella
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Yuanning Li
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Sonja L. Knowles
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA
| | - Huzefa A. Raja
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA
| | - Nicholas H. Oberlies
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA
| | - Xiaofan Zhou
- Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Microbial Signals and Disease Control, Integrative Microbiology Research Centre, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Oliver A. Cornely
- University of Cologne, Medical Faculty and University Hospital Cologne, Department I of Internal Medicine, Excellence Center for Medical Mycology (ECMM), Cologne, Germany
- University of Cologne, Cologne Excellence Cluster on Cellular Stress Responses in Aging-Associated Diseases (CECAD), Cologne, Germany
- ZKS Köln, Clinical Trials Centre Cologne, Cologne, Germany
- German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), Partner Site Bonn‐Cologne, Medical Faculty and University Hospital Cologne, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
| | - Frieder Fuchs
- Faculty of Medicine, Institute for Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Hygiene, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
| | - Philipp Koehler
- University of Cologne, Medical Faculty and University Hospital Cologne, Department I of Internal Medicine, Excellence Center for Medical Mycology (ECMM), Cologne, Germany
- University of Cologne, Cologne Excellence Cluster on Cellular Stress Responses in Aging-Associated Diseases (CECAD), Cologne, Germany
| | - Gustavo H. Goldman
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
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Mead ME, Borowsky AT, Joehnk B, Steenwyk JL, Shen XX, Sil A, Rokas A. Recurrent Loss of abaA, a Master Regulator of Asexual Development in Filamentous Fungi, Correlates with Changes in Genomic and Morphological Traits. Genome Biol Evol 2021; 12:1119-1130. [PMID: 32442273 PMCID: PMC7531577 DOI: 10.1093/gbe/evaa107] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 05/19/2020] [Indexed: 12/11/2022] Open
Abstract
Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) drive developmental and cellular differentiation, and variation in their architectures gives rise to morphological diversity. Pioneering studies in Aspergillus fungi, coupled with subsequent work in other filamentous fungi, have shown that the GRN governed by the BrlA, AbaA, and WetA proteins controls the development of the asexual fruiting body or conidiophore. A specific aspect of conidiophore development is the production of phialides, conidiophore structures that are under the developmental control of AbaA and function to repetitively generate spores. Fungal genome sequencing has revealed that some filamentous fungi lack abaA, and also produce asexual structures that lack phialides, raising the hypothesis that abaA loss is functionally linked to diversity in asexual fruiting body morphology. To examine this hypothesis, we carried out an extensive search for the abaA gene across 241 genomes of species from the fungal subphylum Pezizomycotina. We found that abaA was independently lost in four lineages of Eurotiomycetes, including from all sequenced species within the order Onygenales, and that all four lineages that have lost abaA also lack the ability to form phialides. Genetic restoration of abaA from Aspergillus nidulans into Histoplasma capsulatum, a pathogenic species from the order Onygenales that lacks an endogenous copy of abaA, did not alter Histoplasma conidiation morphology but resulted in a marked increase in spore viability. We also discovered that species lacking abaA contain fewer AbaA binding motifs in the regulatory regions of orthologs of some AbaA target genes, suggesting that the asexual fruiting body GRN of organisms that have lost abaA has likely been rewired. Our results provide an illustration of how repeated losses of a key regulatory transcription factor have contributed to the diversity of an iconic fungal morphological trait.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew E Mead
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University
| | | | - Bastian Joehnk
- Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of California San Francisco
| | | | - Xing-Xing Shen
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University
| | - Anita Sil
- Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of California San Francisco
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University
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Mead ME, Steenwyk JL, Silva LP, de Castro PA, Saeed N, Hillmann F, Goldman GH, Rokas A. An evolutionary genomic approach reveals both conserved and species-specific genetic elements related to human disease in closely related Aspergillus fungi. Genetics 2021; 218:6263860. [PMID: 33944921 DOI: 10.1093/genetics/iyab066] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/11/2021] [Accepted: 04/20/2021] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Aspergillosis is an important opportunistic human disease caused by filamentous fungi in the genus Aspergillus. Roughly 70% of infections are caused by Aspergillus fumigatus, with the rest stemming from approximately a dozen other Aspergillus species. Several of these pathogens are closely related to A. fumigatus and belong in the same taxonomic section, section Fumigati. Pathogenic species are frequently most closely related to nonpathogenic ones, suggesting Aspergillus pathogenicity evolved multiple times independently. To understand the repeated evolution of Aspergillus pathogenicity, we performed comparative genomic analyses on 18 strains from 13 species, including 8 species in section Fumigati, which aimed to identify genes, both ones previously connected to virulence as well as ones never before implicated, whose evolution differs between pathogens and nonpathogens. We found that most genes were present in all species, including approximately half of those previously connected to virulence, but a few genes were section- or species-specific. Evolutionary rate analyses identified over 1700 genes whose evolutionary rate differed between pathogens and nonpathogens and dozens of genes whose rates differed between specific pathogens and the rest of the taxa. Functional testing of deletion mutants of 17 transcription factor-encoding genes whose evolution differed between pathogens and nonpathogens identified eight genes that affect either fungal survival in a model of phagocytic killing, host survival in an animal model of fungal disease, or both. These results suggest that the evolution of pathogenicity in Aspergillus involved both conserved and species-specific genetic elements, illustrating how an evolutionary genomic approach informs the study of fungal disease.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew E Mead
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Lilian P Silva
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Patrícia A de Castro
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Nauman Saeed
- Junior Research Group Evolution of Microbial Interactions, Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology, Hans Knöll Institute (HKI), Jena, Germany
| | - Falk Hillmann
- Junior Research Group Evolution of Microbial Interactions, Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology, Hans Knöll Institute (HKI), Jena, Germany
| | - Gustavo H Goldman
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
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Li Y, Steenwyk JL, Chang Y, Wang Y, James TY, Stajich JE, Spatafora JW, Groenewald M, Dunn CW, Hittinger CT, Shen XX, Rokas A. A genome-scale phylogeny of the kingdom Fungi. Curr Biol 2021; 31:1653-1665.e5. [PMID: 33607033 PMCID: PMC8347878 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.01.074] [Citation(s) in RCA: 105] [Impact Index Per Article: 35.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/11/2020] [Revised: 12/10/2020] [Accepted: 01/21/2021] [Indexed: 12/22/2022]
Abstract
Phylogenomic studies using genome-scale amounts of data have greatly improved understanding of the tree of life. Despite the diversity, ecological significance, and biomedical and industrial importance of fungi, evolutionary relationships among several major lineages remain poorly resolved, especially those near the base of the fungal phylogeny. To examine poorly resolved relationships and assess progress toward a genome-scale phylogeny of the fungal kingdom, we compiled a phylogenomic data matrix of 290 genes from the genomes of 1,644 species that includes representatives from most major fungal lineages. We also compiled 11 data matrices by subsampling genes or taxa from the full data matrix based on filtering criteria previously shown to improve phylogenomic inference. Analyses of these 12 data matrices using concatenation- and coalescent-based approaches yielded a robust phylogeny of the fungal kingdom, in which ∼85% of internal branches were congruent across data matrices and approaches used. We found support for several historically poorly resolved relationships as well as evidence for polytomies likely stemming from episodes of ancient diversification. By examining the relative evolutionary divergence of taxonomic groups of equivalent rank, we found that fungal taxonomy is broadly aligned with both genome sequence divergence and divergence time but also identified lineages where current taxonomic circumscription does not reflect their levels of evolutionary divergence. Our results provide a robust phylogenomic framework to explore the tempo and mode of fungal evolution and offer directions for future fungal phylogenetic and taxonomic studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuanning Li
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Ying Chang
- Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA
| | - Yan Wang
- Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology, Institute for Integrative Genome Biology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA; Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Timothy Y James
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
| | - Jason E Stajich
- Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology, Institute for Integrative Genome Biology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA
| | - Joseph W Spatafora
- Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA
| | - Marizeth Groenewald
- Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute, 3584 CT, Utrecht 85167, the Netherlands
| | - Casey W Dunn
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
| | - Chris Todd Hittinger
- Laboratory of Genetics, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J.F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Wisconsin Energy Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA
| | - Xing-Xing Shen
- State Key Laboratory of Rice Biology and Ministry of Agriculture Key Lab of Molecular Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects, Institute of Insect Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA.
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LaBella AL, Opulente DA, Steenwyk JL, Hittinger CT, Rokas A. Signatures of optimal codon usage in metabolic genes inform budding yeast ecology. PLoS Biol 2021; 19:e3001185. [PMID: 33872297 PMCID: PMC8084343 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001185] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/22/2020] [Revised: 04/29/2021] [Accepted: 03/15/2021] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
Reverse ecology is the inference of ecological information from patterns of genomic variation. One rich, heretofore underutilized, source of ecologically relevant genomic information is codon optimality or adaptation. Bias toward codons that match the tRNA pool is robustly associated with high gene expression in diverse organisms, suggesting that codon optimization could be used in a reverse ecology framework to identify highly expressed, ecologically relevant genes. To test this hypothesis, we examined the relationship between optimal codon usage in the classic galactose metabolism (GAL) pathway and known ecological niches for 329 species of budding yeasts, a diverse subphylum of fungi. We find that optimal codon usage in the GAL pathway is positively correlated with quantitative growth on galactose, suggesting that GAL codon optimization reflects increased capacity to grow on galactose. Optimal codon usage in the GAL pathway is also positively correlated with human-associated ecological niches in yeasts of the CUG-Ser1 clade and with dairy-associated ecological niches in the family Saccharomycetaceae. For example, optimal codon usage of GAL genes is greater than 85% of all genes in the genome of the major human pathogen Candida albicans (CUG-Ser1 clade) and greater than 75% of genes in the genome of the dairy yeast Kluyveromyces lactis (family Saccharomycetaceae). We further find a correlation between optimization in the GALactose pathway genes and several genes associated with nutrient sensing and metabolism. This work suggests that codon optimization harbors information about the metabolic ecology of microbial eukaryotes. This information may be particularly useful for studying fungal dark matter-species that have yet to be cultured in the lab or have only been identified by genomic material.
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Affiliation(s)
- Abigail Leavitt LaBella
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
| | - Dana A. Opulente
- Department of Biology, Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania, United States of America
| | - Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
| | - Chris Todd Hittinger
- Laboratory of Genetics, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, J.F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
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Shen XX, Steenwyk JL, Rokas A. Dissecting incongruence between concatenation- and quartet-based approaches in phylogenomic data. Syst Biol 2021; 70:997-1014. [PMID: 33616672 DOI: 10.1093/sysbio/syab011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/08/2020] [Revised: 02/10/2021] [Accepted: 02/17/2021] [Indexed: 12/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Topological conflict or incongruence is widespread in phylogenomic data. Concatenation- and coalescent-based approaches often result in incongruent topologies, but the causes of this conflict can be difficult to characterize. We examined incongruence stemming from conflict between likelihood-based signal (quantified by the difference in gene-wise log likelihood score or ΔGLS) and quartet-based topological signal (quantified by the difference in gene-wise quartet score or ΔGQS) for every gene in three phylogenomic studies in animals, fungi, and plants, which were chosen because their concatenation-based IQ-TREE (T1) and quartet-based ASTRAL (T2) phylogenies are known to produce eight conflicting internal branches (bipartitions). By comparing the types of phylogenetic signal for all genes in these three data matrices, we found that 30% - 36% of genes in each data matrix are inconsistent, that is, each of these genes has higher log likelihood score for T1 versus T2 (i.e., ΔGLS >0) whereas its T1 topology has lower quartet score than its T2 topology (i.e., ΔGQS <0) or vice versa. Comparison of inconsistent and consistent genes using a variety of metrics (e.g., evolutionary rate, gene tree topology, distribution of branch lengths, hidden paralogy, and gene tree discordance) showed that inconsistent genes are more likely to recover neither T1 nor T2 and have higher levels of gene tree discordance than consistent genes. Simulation analyses demonstrate that removal of inconsistent genes from datasets with low levels of incomplete lineage sorting (ILS) and low and medium levels of gene tree estimation error (GTEE) reduced incongruence and increased accuracy. In contrast, removal of inconsistent genes from datasets with medium and high ILS levels and high GTEE levels eliminated or extensively reduced incongruence, but the resulting congruent species phylogenies were not always topologically identical to the true species trees.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xing-Xing Shen
- State Key Laboratory of Rice Biology and Ministry of Agriculture Key Lab of Molecular Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.,Institute of Insect Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
| | - Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
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Steenwyk JL. Cover Image: A portrait of budding yeasts: A symbol of the arts, sciences and a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Yeast 2021. [DOI: 10.1002/yea.3551] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
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Steenwyk JL, Buida TJ, Labella AL, Li Y, Shen XX, Rokas A. PhyKIT: a broadly applicable UNIX shell toolkit for processing and analyzing phylogenomic data. Bioinformatics 2021; 37:2325-2331. [PMID: 33560364 PMCID: PMC8388027 DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btab096] [Citation(s) in RCA: 48] [Impact Index Per Article: 16.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/06/2020] [Revised: 01/13/2021] [Accepted: 02/05/2021] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
MOTIVATION Diverse disciplines in biology process and analyze multiple sequence alignments (MSAs) and phylogenetic trees to evaluate their information content, infer evolutionary events and processes, and predict gene function. However, automated processing of MSAs and trees remains a challenge due to the lack of a unified toolkit. To fill this gap, we introduce PhyKIT, a toolkit for the UNIX shell environment with 30 functions that process MSAs and trees, including but not limited to estimation of mutation rate, evaluation of sequence composition biases, calculation of the degree of violation of a molecular clock, and collapsing bipartitions (internal branches) with low support. RESULTS To demonstrate the utility of PhyKIT, we detail three use cases: (1) summarizing information content in MSAs and phylogenetic trees for diagnosing potential biases in sequence or tree data; (2) evaluating gene-gene covariation of evolutionary rates to identify functional relationships, including novel ones, among genes; and (3) identify lack of resolution events or polytomies in phylogenetic trees, which are suggestive of rapid radiation events or lack of data. We anticipate PhyKIT will be useful for processing, examining, and deriving biological meaning from increasingly large phylogenomic datasets. AVAILABILITY PhyKIT is freely available on GitHub (https://github.com/JLSteenwyk/PhyKIT), PyPi (https://pypi.org/project/phykit/), and the Anaconda Cloud (https://anaconda.org/JLSteenwyk/phykit) under the MIT license with extensive documentation and user tutorials (https://jlsteenwyk.com/PhyKIT). SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available on figshare (doi: 10.6084/m9.figshare.13118600) and are available at Bioinformatics online.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN, 37235, United States of America
| | - Thomas J Buida
- 9 City Place #312, Nashville, TN, 37209, United States of America
| | - Abigail L Labella
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN, 37235, United States of America
| | - Yuanning Li
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN, 37235, United States of America
| | - Xing-Xing Shen
- Ministry of Agriculture Key Lab of Molecular Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects, Institute of Insect Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B #35-1634, Nashville, TN, 37235, United States of America
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuanning Li
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235
| | - Kyle T David
- Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849
| | - Xing-Xing Shen
- State Key Laboratory of Rice Biology and Ministry of Agriculture Key Lab of Molecular Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects, Institute of Insect Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
| | - Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235
| | | | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235;
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Steenwyk JL, Buida TJ, Li Y, Shen XX, Rokas A. ClipKIT: A multiple sequence alignment trimming software for accurate phylogenomic inference. PLoS Biol 2020; 18:e3001007. [PMID: 33264284 PMCID: PMC7735675 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 143] [Impact Index Per Article: 35.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/24/2020] [Revised: 12/14/2020] [Accepted: 11/10/2020] [Indexed: 12/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Highly divergent sites in multiple sequence alignments (MSAs), which can stem from erroneous inference of homology and saturation of substitutions, are thought to negatively impact phylogenetic inference. Thus, several different trimming strategies have been developed for identifying and removing these sites prior to phylogenetic inference. However, a recent study reported that doing so can worsen inference, underscoring the need for alternative alignment trimming strategies. Here, we introduce ClipKIT, an alignment trimming software that, rather than identifying and removing putatively phylogenetically uninformative sites, instead aims to identify and retain parsimony-informative sites, which are known to be phylogenetically informative. To test the efficacy of ClipKIT, we examined the accuracy and support of phylogenies inferred from 14 different alignment trimming strategies, including those implemented in ClipKIT, across nearly 140,000 alignments from a broad sampling of evolutionary histories. Phylogenies inferred from ClipKIT-trimmed alignments are accurate, robust, and time saving. Furthermore, ClipKIT consistently outperformed other trimming methods across diverse datasets, suggesting that strategies based on identifying and retaining parsimony-informative sites provide a robust framework for alignment trimming.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
- * E-mail: (JLS); (AR)
| | | | - Yuanning Li
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
| | - Xing-Xing Shen
- Ministry of Agriculture Key Lab of Molecular Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects, Institute of Insect Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Biological Sciences, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
- * E-mail: (JLS); (AR)
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Steenwyk JL, Mead ME, de Castro PA, Valero C, Damasio A, dos Santos RAC, Labella AL, Li Y, Knowles SL, Raja HA, Oberlies NH, Zhou X, Cornely OA, Fuchs F, Koehler P, Goldman GH, Rokas A. Genomic and phenotypic analysis of COVID-19-associated pulmonary aspergillosis isolates of Aspergillus fumigatus. bioRxiv 2020:2020.11.06.371971. [PMID: 33173866 PMCID: PMC7654854 DOI: 10.1101/2020.11.06.371971] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/04/2023]
Abstract
The ongoing global pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is responsible for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) first described from Wuhan, China. A subset of COVID-19 patients has been reported to have acquired secondary infections by microbial pathogens, such as fungal opportunistic pathogens from the genus Aspergillus . To gain insight into COVID-19 associated pulmonary aspergillosis (CAPA), we analyzed the genomes and characterized the phenotypic profiles of four CAPA isolates of Aspergillus fumigatus obtained from patients treated in the area of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. By examining the mutational spectrum of single nucleotide polymorphisms, insertion-deletion polymorphisms, and copy number variants among 206 genes known to modulate A. fumigatus virulence, we found that CAPA isolate genomes do not exhibit major differences from the genome of the Af293 reference strain. By examining virulence in an invertebrate moth model, growth in the presence of osmotic, cell wall, and oxidative stressors, and the minimum inhibitory concentration of antifungal drugs, we found that CAPA isolates were generally, but not always, similar to A. fumigatus reference strains Af293 and CEA17. Notably, CAPA isolate D had more putative loss of function mutations in genes known to increase virulence when deleted (e.g., in the FLEA gene, which encodes a lectin recognized by macrophages). Moreover, CAPA isolate D was significantly more virulent than the other three CAPA isolates and the A. fumigatus reference strains tested. These findings expand our understanding of the genomic and phenotypic characteristics of isolates that cause CAPA.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Matthew E. Mead
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Patrícia Alves de Castro
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Clara Valero
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - André Damasio
- Institute of Biology, University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas-SP, Brazil
- Experimental Medicine Research Cluster (EMRC), University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas-SP, Brazil
| | - Renato A. C. dos Santos
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Abigail L. Labella
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Yuanning Li
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Sonja L. Knowles
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina 27402
| | - Huzefa A. Raja
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina 27402
| | - Nicholas H. Oberlies
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina 27402
| | - Xiaofan Zhou
- Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Microbial Signals and Disease Control, Integrative Microbiology Research Centre, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Oliver A. Cornely
- University of Cologne, Medical Faculty and University Hospital Cologne, Department I of Internal Medicine, Excellence Center for Medical Mycology (ECMM), Cologne, Germany
- University of Cologne, Cologne Excellence Cluster on Cellular Stress Responses in Aging-Associated Diseases (CECAD), Cologne, Germany
- ZKS Köln, Clinical Trials Centre Cologne, Cologne, Germany
- German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), Partner Site Bonn Cologne, Medical Faculty and University Hospital Cologne, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
| | - Frieder Fuchs
- Faculty of Medicine, Institute for Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Hygiene, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
| | - Philipp Koehler
- University of Cologne, Medical Faculty and University Hospital Cologne, Department I of Internal Medicine, Excellence Center for Medical Mycology (ECMM), Cologne, Germany
- University of Cologne, Cologne Excellence Cluster on Cellular Stress Responses in Aging-Associated Diseases (CECAD), Cologne, Germany
| | - Gustavo H. Goldman
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
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Shen XX, Steenwyk JL, LaBella AL, Opulente DA, Zhou X, Kominek J, Li Y, Groenewald M, Hittinger CT, Rokas A. Genome-scale phylogeny and contrasting modes of genome evolution in the fungal phylum Ascomycota. Sci Adv 2020; 6:eabd0079. [PMID: 33148650 PMCID: PMC7673691 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abd0079] [Citation(s) in RCA: 58] [Impact Index Per Article: 14.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/26/2020] [Accepted: 09/21/2020] [Indexed: 05/14/2023]
Abstract
Ascomycota, the largest and most well-studied phylum of fungi, contains three subphyla: Saccharomycotina (budding yeasts), Pezizomycotina (filamentous fungi), and Taphrinomycotina (fission yeasts). Despite its importance, we lack a comprehensive genome-scale phylogeny or understanding of the similarities and differences in the mode of genome evolution within this phylum. By examining 1107 genomes from Saccharomycotina (332), Pezizomycotina (761), and Taphrinomycotina (14) species, we inferred a robust genome-wide phylogeny that resolves several contentious relationships and estimated that the Ascomycota last common ancestor likely originated in the Ediacaran period. Comparisons of genomic properties revealed that Saccharomycotina and Pezizomycotina differ greatly in their genome properties and enabled inference of the direction of evolutionary change. The Saccharomycotina typically have smaller genomes, lower guanine-cytosine contents, lower numbers of genes, and higher rates of molecular sequence evolution compared with Pezizomycotina. These results provide a robust evolutionary framework for understanding the diversity and ecological lifestyles of the largest fungal phylum.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xing-Xing Shen
- Institute of Insect Sciences, Ministry of Agriculture Key Lab of Molecular Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects, College of Agriculture and Biotechnology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
| | - Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Abigail L LaBella
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Dana A Opulente
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA
| | - Xiaofan Zhou
- Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Microbial Signals and Disease Control, Integrative Microbiology Research Centre, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China
| | - Jacek Kominek
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA
| | - Yuanning Li
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | | | - Chris T Hittinger
- Laboratory of Genetics, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA.
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Steenwyk JL, Mead ME, Knowles SL, Raja HA, Roberts CD, Bader O, Houbraken J, Goldman GH, Oberlies NH, Rokas A. Variation Among Biosynthetic Gene Clusters, Secondary Metabolite Profiles, and Cards of Virulence Across Aspergillus Species. Genetics 2020; 216:481-497. [PMID: 32817009 PMCID: PMC7536862 DOI: 10.1534/genetics.120.303549] [Citation(s) in RCA: 41] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/15/2020] [Accepted: 08/01/2020] [Indexed: 02/07/2023] Open
Abstract
Aspergillus fumigatus is a major human pathogen. In contrast, Aspergillus fischeri and the recently described Aspergillus oerlinghausenensis, the two species most closely related to A. fumigatus, are not known to be pathogenic. Some of the genetic determinants of virulence (or "cards of virulence") that A. fumigatus possesses are secondary metabolites that impair the host immune system, protect from host immune cell attacks, or acquire key nutrients. To examine whether secondary metabolism-associated cards of virulence vary between these species, we conducted extensive genomic and secondary metabolite profiling analyses of multiple A. fumigatus, one A. oerlinghausenensis, and multiple A. fischeri strains. We identified two cards of virulence (gliotoxin and fumitremorgin) shared by all three species and three cards of virulence (trypacidin, pseurotin, and fumagillin) that are variable. For example, we found that all species and strains examined biosynthesized gliotoxin, which is known to contribute to virulence, consistent with the conservation of the gliotoxin biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) across genomes. For other secondary metabolites, such as fumitremorgin, a modulator of host biology, we found that all species produced the metabolite but that there was strain heterogeneity in its production within species. Finally, species differed in their biosynthesis of fumagillin and pseurotin, both contributors to host tissue damage during invasive aspergillosis. A. fumigatus biosynthesized fumagillin and pseurotin, while A. oerlinghausenensis biosynthesized fumagillin and A. fischeri biosynthesized neither. These biochemical differences were reflected in sequence divergence of the intertwined fumagillin/pseurotin BGCs across genomes. These results delineate the similarities and differences in secondary metabolism-associated cards of virulence between a major fungal pathogen and its nonpathogenic closest relatives, shedding light onto the genetic and phenotypic changes associated with the evolution of fungal pathogenicity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235
| | - Matthew E Mead
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235
| | - Sonja L Knowles
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina 27402
| | - Huzefa A Raja
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina 27402
| | - Christopher D Roberts
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina 27402
| | - Oliver Bader
- Institute for Medical Microbiology, University Medical Center Göttingen, 37075, Germany
| | - Jos Houbraken
- Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute, 3584 CT Utrecht, The Netherlands
| | - Gustavo H Goldman
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, 14040-900 Brazil
| | - Nicholas H Oberlies
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina 27402
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235
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Steenwyk JL. A portrait of budding yeasts: A symbol of the arts, sciences and a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Yeast 2020; 38:54-56. [PMID: 32869892 DOI: 10.1002/yea.3518] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/29/2020] [Accepted: 08/20/2020] [Indexed: 01/10/2023] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.,Early Career Leadership Program Communication and Outreach Subcommittee, Genetics Society of America, Rockville, MD, USA
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48
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Steenwyk JL, Lind AL, Ries LNA, Dos Reis TF, Silva LP, Almeida F, Bastos RW, Fraga da Silva TFDC, Bonato VLD, Pessoni AM, Rodrigues F, Raja HA, Knowles SL, Oberlies NH, Lagrou K, Goldman GH, Rokas A. Pathogenic Allodiploid Hybrids of Aspergillus Fungi. Curr Biol 2020; 30:2495-2507.e7. [PMID: 32502407 PMCID: PMC7343619 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.04.071] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/16/2019] [Revised: 02/25/2020] [Accepted: 04/24/2020] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
Interspecific hybridization substantially alters genotypes and phenotypes and can give rise to new lineages. Hybrid isolates that differ from their parental species in infection-relevant traits have been observed in several human-pathogenic yeasts and plant-pathogenic filamentous fungi but have yet to be found in human-pathogenic filamentous fungi. We discovered 6 clinical isolates from patients with aspergillosis originally identified as Aspergillus nidulans (section Nidulantes) that are actually allodiploid hybrids formed by the fusion of Aspergillus spinulosporus with an unknown close relative of Aspergillus quadrilineatus, both in section Nidulantes. Evolutionary genomic analyses revealed that these isolates belong to Aspergillus latus, an allodiploid hybrid species. Characterization of diverse infection-relevant traits further showed that A. latus hybrid isolates are genomically and phenotypically heterogeneous but also differ from A. nidulans, A. spinulosporus, and A. quadrilineatus. These results suggest that allodiploid hybridization contributes to the genomic and phenotypic diversity of filamentous fungal pathogens of humans.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob L Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, 465 21st Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
| | - Abigail L Lind
- Department of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, 1211 Medical Center Drive, Nashville, TN 37232, USA; Gladstone Institute of Data Science and Biotechnology, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA
| | - Laure N A Ries
- Departamento de Bioquímica e Imunologia, Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto da Universidade de São Paulo (FMRP-USP), Avenida Bandeirantes 3900, Vila Monte Alegre, 14049-900 Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil; Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Departamento de Ciências Farmacêuticas, Universidade de São Paulo, Avenida do Café S/N, Ribeirão Preto 14040-903, Brazil
| | - Thaila F Dos Reis
- Departamento de Bioquímica e Imunologia, Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto da Universidade de São Paulo (FMRP-USP), Avenida Bandeirantes 3900, Vila Monte Alegre, 14049-900 Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil; Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Departamento de Ciências Farmacêuticas, Universidade de São Paulo, Avenida do Café S/N, Ribeirão Preto 14040-903, Brazil
| | - Lilian P Silva
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Departamento de Ciências Farmacêuticas, Universidade de São Paulo, Avenida do Café S/N, Ribeirão Preto 14040-903, Brazil
| | - Fausto Almeida
- Departamento de Bioquímica e Imunologia, Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto da Universidade de São Paulo (FMRP-USP), Avenida Bandeirantes 3900, Vila Monte Alegre, 14049-900 Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Rafael W Bastos
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Departamento de Ciências Farmacêuticas, Universidade de São Paulo, Avenida do Café S/N, Ribeirão Preto 14040-903, Brazil
| | - Thais Fernanda de Campos Fraga da Silva
- Departamento de Bioquímica e Imunologia, Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto da Universidade de São Paulo (FMRP-USP), Avenida Bandeirantes 3900, Vila Monte Alegre, 14049-900 Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Vania L D Bonato
- Departamento de Bioquímica e Imunologia, Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto da Universidade de São Paulo (FMRP-USP), Avenida Bandeirantes 3900, Vila Monte Alegre, 14049-900 Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - André Moreira Pessoni
- Departamento de Bioquímica e Imunologia, Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto da Universidade de São Paulo (FMRP-USP), Avenida Bandeirantes 3900, Vila Monte Alegre, 14049-900 Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Fernando Rodrigues
- Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), School of Medicine, University of Minho, 4715-495 Braga, Portugal; ICVS/3B's-PT Government Associate Laboratory, 4715-495 Braga, Portugal
| | - Huzefa A Raja
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1400 Spring Garden Street, Greensboro, NC 27412, USA
| | - Sonja L Knowles
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1400 Spring Garden Street, Greensboro, NC 27412, USA
| | - Nicholas H Oberlies
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1400 Spring Garden Street, Greensboro, NC 27412, USA
| | - Katrien Lagrou
- Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Transplantation, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium; Department of Laboratory Medicine and National Reference Centre for Mycosis, University Hospitals Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
| | - Gustavo H Goldman
- Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Ribeirão Preto, Departamento de Ciências Farmacêuticas, Universidade de São Paulo, Avenida do Café S/N, Ribeirão Preto 14040-903, Brazil.
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, 465 21st Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37235, USA; Department of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, 1211 Medical Center Drive, Nashville, TN 37232, USA.
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Abstract
Covering: up to 2019Fungi produce a remarkable diversity of secondary metabolites: small, bioactive molecules not required for growth but which are essential to their ecological interactions with other organisms. Genes that participate in the same secondary metabolic pathway typically reside next to each other in fungal genomes and form biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). By synthesizing state-of-the-art knowledge on the evolution of BGCs in fungi, we propose that fungal chemodiversity stems from three molecular evolutionary processes involving BGCs: functional divergence, horizontal transfer, and de novo assembly. We provide examples of how these processes have contributed to the generation of fungal chemodiversity, discuss their relative importance, and outline major, outstanding questions in the field.
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Affiliation(s)
- Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
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50
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Ries LNA, Pardeshi L, Dong Z, Tan K, Steenwyk JL, Colabardini AC, Ferreira Filho JA, de Castro PA, Silva LP, Preite NW, Almeida F, de Assis LJ, dos Santos RAC, Bowyer P, Bromley M, Owens RA, Doyle S, Demasi M, Hernández DCR, Netto LES, Pupo MT, Rokas A, Loures FV, Wong KH, Goldman GH. The Aspergillus fumigatus transcription factor RglT is important for gliotoxin biosynthesis and self-protection, and virulence. PLoS Pathog 2020; 16:e1008645. [PMID: 32667960 PMCID: PMC7384679 DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1008645] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/28/2020] [Revised: 07/27/2020] [Accepted: 05/19/2020] [Indexed: 12/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Aspergillus fumigatus is an opportunistic fungal pathogen that secretes an array of immune-modulatory molecules, including secondary metabolites (SMs), which contribute to enhancing fungal fitness and growth within the mammalian host. Gliotoxin (GT) is a SM that interferes with the function and recruitment of innate immune cells, which are essential for eliminating A. fumigatus during invasive infections. We identified a C6 Zn cluster-type transcription factor (TF), subsequently named RglT, important for A. fumigatus oxidative stress resistance, GT biosynthesis and self-protection. RglT regulates the expression of several gli genes of the GT biosynthetic gene cluster, including the oxidoreductase-encoding gene gliT, by directly binding to their respective promoter regions. Subsequently, RglT was shown to be important for virulence in a chemotherapeutic murine model of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA). Homologues of RglT and GliT are present in eurotiomycete and sordariomycete fungi, including the non-GT-producing fungus A. nidulans, where a conservation of function was described. Phylogenetically informed model testing led to an evolutionary scenario in which the GliT-based resistance mechanism is ancestral and RglT-mediated regulation of GliT occurred subsequently. In conclusion, this work describes the function of a previously uncharacterised TF in oxidative stress resistance, GT biosynthesis and self-protection in both GT-producing and non-producing Aspergillus species.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laure N. A. Ries
- Faculty of Medicine of Ribeirao Preto, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Lakhansing Pardeshi
- Genomics and Bioinformatics Core, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
- Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
| | - Zhiqiang Dong
- Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
| | - Kaeling Tan
- Genomics and Bioinformatics Core, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
- Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
- Centre for Precision Medicine and Research and Training, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
| | - Jacob L. Steenwyk
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States of America
| | - Ana Cristina Colabardini
- Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirao Preto, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Jaire A. Ferreira Filho
- Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirao Preto, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Patricia A. de Castro
- Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirao Preto, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Lilian P. Silva
- Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirao Preto, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Nycolas W. Preite
- Institute of Science and Technology, Federal University of São Paulo, São José dos Campos, Brazil
| | - Fausto Almeida
- Faculty of Medicine of Ribeirao Preto, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Leandro J. de Assis
- Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirao Preto, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Renato A. C. dos Santos
- Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirao Preto, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Paul Bowyer
- Manchester Fungal Infection Group, Division of Infection, Immunity and Respiratory Medicine, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
| | - Michael Bromley
- Manchester Fungal Infection Group, Division of Infection, Immunity and Respiratory Medicine, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
| | | | - Sean Doyle
- Department of Biology, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland
| | - Marilene Demasi
- Institute Butantan, Laboratory of Biochemistry and Biophysics, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Diego C. R. Hernández
- Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirao Preto, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | | | - Monica T. Pupo
- Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirao Preto, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
| | - Antonis Rokas
- Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States of America
| | - Flavio V. Loures
- Institute of Science and Technology, Federal University of São Paulo, São José dos Campos, Brazil
| | - Koon H. Wong
- Genomics and Bioinformatics Core, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
- Institute of Translational Medicine, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
| | - Gustavo H. Goldman
- Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirao Preto, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil
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