Ancient dispersal of the human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus gattii from the Amazon rainforest

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-03T13:08:43Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2013-08-07Bitstream added on 2014-12-03T13:24:38Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 WOS000323109700082.pdf: 1393704 bytes, checksum: 25bc393488fc34ae69a2e38b45a346c2 (MD5) NPRP grant from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar foundation) NCF (Netherlands Computer Facility Foundation) NWO (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) Odo van Vloten Foundation Over the past two decades, several fungal outbreaks have occurred, including the high-profile 'Vancouver Island' and 'Pacific Northwest' outbreaks, caused by Cryptococcus gattii, which has affected hundreds of otherwise healthy humans and animals. Over the same time period, C. gattii was the cause of several additional case clusters at localities outside of the tropical and subtropical climate zones where the species normally occurs. In every case, the causative agent belongs to a previously rare genotype of C. gattii called AFLP6/VGII, but the origin of the outbreak clades remains enigmatic. Here we used phylogenetic and recombination analyses, based on AFLP and multiple MLST datasets, and coalescence gene genealogy to demonstrate that these outbreaks have arisen from a highly-recombining C. gattii population in the native rainforest of Northern Brazil. Thus the modern virulent C. gattii AFLP6/VGII outbreak lineages derived from mating events in South America and then dispersed to temperate regions where they cause serious infections in humans and animals. CBS KNAW Fungal Biodivers Ctr, Dept Yeast & Basidiomycete Res, Utrecht, Netherlands Canisius Wilhelmina Hosp, Dept Med Microbiol & Infect Dis, Nijmegen, Netherlands Univ Sao Paulo State, Dept Phytopathol, UNESP, Ilha Solteira, Brazil Hadassah Hebrew Univ Med Ctr, Dept Clin Microbiol & Infect Dis, Jerusalem, Israel Univ Birmingham, Sch Biosci, Birmingham, W Midlands, England Univ Ghent, Fac Pharmaceut Sci, Lab Pharmaceut Biotechnol, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium Ctr Genom Regulat, Barcelona, Spain UPF Doctor Aiguader, Barcelona, Spain Netherlands Inst Ecol NIOO KNAW, Ctr Limnol, Wageningen, Netherlands Ctr Wiskunde & Informat, Amsterdam, Netherlands Vrije Univ Amsterdam, Dept Operat Res, Amsterdam, Netherlands Univ British Columbia, Sch Environm Hlth, Vancouver, BC V5Z 1M9, Canada Inst Nacl Salud, Microbiol Grp, Bogota, Colombia Fiocruz MS, Fundacao Oswaldo Cruz, Lab Micol, Inst Pesquisa Clin Evandro Chagas, BR-21045900 Rio De Janeiro, Brazil Univ Sydney, Westmead Hosp, Ctr Infect Dis & Microbiol,Sydney Emerging Dis &, Mol Mycol Res Lab,Westmead Millennium Inst,Sydney, Westmead, NSW 2145, Australia Radboud Univ Nijmegen, Med Ctr, Dept Med Microbiol, NL-6525 ED Nijmegen, Netherlands Second Mil Med Univ, Changzheng Hosp, Shanghai Key Lab Mol Med Mycol, Shanghai, Peoples R China Univ Med Ctr, Dept Internal Med & Infect Dis, Utrecht, Netherlands Univ Sao Paulo State, Dept Phytopathol, UNESP, Ilha Solteira, Brazil NPRP grant from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar foundation)5-298-3-06