Freese Jillian, Beyhan Sinem
Department of Infectious Diseases, J. Craig Venter Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.
Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA 92093, USA.
Curr Clin Microbiol Rep. 2023 Jun;10(2):17-28. doi: 10.1007/s40588-023-00188-4. Epub 2023 Feb 14.
Fungi represent a central yet often overlooked domain of clinically relevant pathogens that have become increasingly important in human disease. With unique adaptive lifestyles that vary widely across species, human fungal pathogens show remarkable diversity in their virulence strategies. The majority of these fungal pathogens are opportunistic, primarily existing in the environment or as commensals that take advantage of immunocompromised hosts to cause disease. In addition, many fungal pathogens have evolved from non-pathogenic lifestyles. The extent of genetic diversity and heritability of virulence traits remains poorly explored in human fungal pathogens.
Genetic variation caused by mutations, genomic rearrangements, gene gain or loss, changes in ploidy, and sexual reproduction have profound effects on genetic diversity. These mechanisms contribute to the remarkable diversity of fungal genomes and have large impacts on their prevalence in human disease, virulence, and resistance to antifungal therapies.
Here, we focus on the genomic structure of the most common human fungal pathogens and the aspects of genetic variability that contribute to their dominance in human disease.
真菌是临床相关病原体中一个核心但常被忽视的领域，在人类疾病中变得越来越重要。人类真菌病原体具有独特的适应性生活方式，因物种而异，其毒力策略表现出显著的多样性。这些真菌病原体大多数是机会性的，主要存在于环境中或作为共生菌，利用免疫功能低下的宿主引发疾病。此外，许多真菌病原体已从非致病性生活方式进化而来。人类真菌病原体中毒力性状的遗传多样性和遗传性程度仍未得到充分探索。
由突变、基因组重排、基因获得或丢失、倍性变化和有性繁殖引起的遗传变异对遗传多样性有深远影响。这些机制导致了真菌基因组的显著多样性，并对它们在人类疾病中的流行、毒力和对抗真菌治疗的抗性产生重大影响。
在此，我们重点关注最常见的人类真菌病原体的基因组结构以及导致它们在人类疾病中占主导地位的遗传变异性方面。
