Global population structure of Aspergillus terreus inferred by ISSR typing reveals geographical subclustering
Date
2011-09-16Author
Neal, Carolyn OS
Richardson, Aaron O
Hurst, Steven F
Tortorano, Anna M
Viviani, Maria A
Stevens, David A
Balajee, S Arunmozhi
Metadata
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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.
Conclusions
This study provides evidence of a population structure linked to geographical origin in A. terreus.