Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comment
. 2018 May 8;9(3):e00181-18.
doi: 10.1128/mBio.00181-18.

Updates in the Language of Histoplasma Biodiversity

Pierre Gladieux  1
Affiliations
Comment

Updates in the Language of Histoplasma Biodiversity

Pierre Gladieux. mBio. .

Abstract

In a recent article, Sepúlveda et al. (mBio 8:e01339-17, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01339-17) investigated the genetic structure and evolutionary history of the human pathogen Histoplasma Using whole-genome resequencing data, Sepúlveda et al. found that the Histoplasma genus is composed of at least four strongly differentiated lineages. Their tour de force is to use a smart combination of population genomic approaches to show that the advanced stage of intraspecific divergence observed within Histoplasma does not simply reflect population structure, but instead results from previously unidentified speciation events. The four independently evolving Histoplasma lineages are elevated to the species status and assigned names. The newly described species exhibit medically important differences in phenotype, and these findings, therefore, have important epidemiological implications. This work provides a blueprint for phylogenomic species recognition in fungi, opening the way for a new age of enlightenment in which fungal species are diagnosed using highly discriminatory tools within a hypothesis-testing framework.

Keywords: fungi; gene flow; genomics; pathogens; speciation; systematics; taxonomy.

PubMed Disclaimer

Comment on

References

    1. Hawksworth DL, Crous PW, Redhead SA, Reynolds DR, Samson RA, Seifert KA, Taylor JW, Wingfield MJ, Abaci O, Aime C, Asan A, Bai FY, de Beer ZW, Begerow D, Berikten D, Boekhout T, Buchanan PK, Burgess T, Buzina W, Cai L, Cannon PF, Crane JL, Damm U, Daniel HM, van Diepeningen AD, Druzhinina I, Dyer PS, Eberhardt U, Fell JW, Frisvad JC, Geiser DM, Geml J, Glienke C, Gräfenhan T, Groenewald JZ, Groenewald M, de Gruyter J, Guého-Kellermann E, Guo LD, Hibbett DS, Hong SB, de Hoog GS, Houbraken J, Huhndorf SM, Hyde KD, Ismail A, Johnston PR, Kadaifciler DG, Kirk PM, Kõljalg U, Kurtzman CP, Lagneau PE, Lévesque CA, Liu X, Lombard L, Meyer W, Miller A, Minter DW, Najafzadeh MJ, Norvell L, Ozerskaya SM, Oziç R, Pennycook SR, Peterson SW, Pettersson OV, Quaedvlieg W, Robert VA, Ruibal C, Schnürer J, Schroers HJ, Shivas R, Slippers B, Spierenburg H, Takashima M, Taşkın E, Thines M, Thrane U, Uztan AH, van Raak M, Varga J, Vasco A, Verkley G, Videira SI, de Vries RP, Weir BS, Yilmaz N, Yurkov A, Zhang N. 2011. The Amsterdam Declaration on fungal nomenclature. IMA Fungus 2:105–112. doi: 10.5598/imafungus.2011.02.01.14. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Grigoriev IV. 2014. A changing landscape of fungal genomics, p 1–20. In Martin F. (ed), The ecological genomics of fungi. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ.
    1. Taylor JW, Turner E, Townsend JP, Dettman JR, Jacobson D. 2006. Eukaryotic microbes, species recognition and the geographic limits of species: examples from the kingdom Fungi. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 361:1947–1963. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2006.1923. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Taylor JW, Jacobson DJ, Kroken S, Kasuga T, Geiser DM, Hibbett DS, Fisher MC. 2000. Phylogenetic species recognition and species concepts in fungi. Fungal Genet Biol 31:21–32. doi: 10.1006/fgbi.2000.1228. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Sepúlveda VE, Márquez R, Turissini DA, Goldman WE, Matute DR. 2017. Genome sequences reveal cryptic speciation in the human pathogen Histoplasma capsulatum. mBio 8:e01339-17. doi: 10.1128/mBio.01339-17. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources