Global population structure of Aspergillus terreus inferred by ISSR typing reveals geographical subclustering.

Neal CO, Richardson AO, Hurst SF, Tortorano AM, Viviani MA, Stevens DA, Balajee SA.

Source

Mycotic Diseases Branch, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Rd NE, Atlanta, GA, 30329, USA. fir3@cdc.gov

Abstract

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND:

Aspergillus terreus causes invasive aspergillosis (IA) in immunocompromised individuals and can be the leading cause of IA in certain medical centers. We examined a large isolate collection (n = 117) for the presence of cryptic A. terreus species and employed a genome scanning method, Inter-Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) PCR to determine A. terreus population structure.

RESULTS:

Comparative sequence analyses of the calmodulin locus revealed the presence of the recently recognized species A. alabamensis (n = 4) in this collection. Maximum parsimony, Neighbor joining, and Bayesian clustering of the ISSR data from the 113 sequence-confirmed A. terreus isolates demonstrated that one clade was composed exclusively of isolates from Europe and another clade was enriched for isolates from the US.