Extreme diversification driven by parallel events of massive loss of heterozygosity in the hybrid lineage of Candida albicans

TY - JOUR

T1 - Extreme diversification driven by parallel events of massive loss of heterozygosity in the hybrid lineage of Candida albicans

AU - Mixão, Verónica

AU - Saus, Ester

AU - Boekhout, Teun

AU - Gabaldón, Toni

N1 - © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Genetics Society of America.

PY - 2021/2/9

Y1 - 2021/2/9

N2 - Candida albicans is the most commonly reported species causing candidiasis. The taxonomic classification of C. albicans and related lineages is controversial, with Candida africana (syn. C. albicans var. africana) and Candida stellatoidea (syn. C. albicans var. stellatoidea) being considered different species or C. albicans varieties depending on the authors. Moreover, recent genomic analyses have suggested a shared hybrid origin of C. albicans and C. africana, but the potential parental lineages remain unidentified. Although the genomes of C. albicans and C. africana have been extensively studied, the genome of C. stellatoidea has not been sequenced so far. In order to get a better understanding of the evolution of the C. albicans clade, and to assess whether C. stellatoidea could represent one of the unknown C. albicans parental lineages, we sequenced C. stellatoidea type strain (CBS 1905). This genome was compared to that of C. albicans and of the closely related lineage C. africana. Our results show that, similarly to C. africana, C. stellatoidea descends from the same hybrid ancestor as other C. albicans strains and that it has undergone a parallel massive loss of heterozygosity.

AB - Candida albicans is the most commonly reported species causing candidiasis. The taxonomic classification of C. albicans and related lineages is controversial, with Candida africana (syn. C. albicans var. africana) and Candida stellatoidea (syn. C. albicans var. stellatoidea) being considered different species or C. albicans varieties depending on the authors. Moreover, recent genomic analyses have suggested a shared hybrid origin of C. albicans and C. africana, but the potential parental lineages remain unidentified. Although the genomes of C. albicans and C. africana have been extensively studied, the genome of C. stellatoidea has not been sequenced so far. In order to get a better understanding of the evolution of the C. albicans clade, and to assess whether C. stellatoidea could represent one of the unknown C. albicans parental lineages, we sequenced C. stellatoidea type strain (CBS 1905). This genome was compared to that of C. albicans and of the closely related lineage C. africana. Our results show that, similarly to C. africana, C. stellatoidea descends from the same hybrid ancestor as other C. albicans strains and that it has undergone a parallel massive loss of heterozygosity.

KW - Candida albicans/genetics

KW - Hybridization, Genetic

KW - Loss of Heterozygosity

U2 - 10.1093/genetics/iyaa004

DO - 10.1093/genetics/iyaa004

M3 - Article

C2 - 33724404

SN - 0016-6731

VL - 217

JO - Genetics

JF - Genetics

IS - 2

ER -