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; Gladstone Institute of Data Science and Biotechnology, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
Curr Biol. 2020 Jul 6;30(13):2495-2507.e7. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.04.071. Epub 2020 Jun 4.
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.
种间杂交大大改变了基因型和表型，并能产生新的谱系。在几种人类致病酵母和植物致病丝状真菌中已经观察到与亲种在感染相关性状上不同的杂交分离株，但尚未在人类致病丝状真菌中发现。我们从曲霉菌病患者中发现了 6 株临床分离株，最初被鉴定为构巢曲霉（节 Nidulantes），实际上都是棘孢曲霉与未知的近缘种四脊曲霉融合形成的异源二倍体杂种，均属于节 Nidulantes。进化基因组分析表明，这些分离株属于长枝曲霉，一种异源二倍体杂种。对不同感染相关性状的特征分析进一步表明，A. latus 杂种分离株在基因组和表型上存在异质性，但也与构巢曲霉、棘孢曲霉和四脊曲霉不同。这些结果表明，异源二倍体杂交有助于人类丝状真菌病原体的基因组和表型多样性。
