The genomes of Scedosporium between environmental challenges and opportunism

Emerging fungal pathogens are a global challenge for humankind.

Many efforts have been made to understand the mechanisms underlying pathogenicity in bacteria, and OMICs techniques are largely responsible for those advancements.

By contrast, our limited understanding of opportunism and antifungal resistance is preventing us from identifying, limiting and interpreting the emergence of fungal pathogens.

The genus Scedosporium (Microascaceae) includes fungi with high tolerance to environmental pollution, whilst some species can be considered major human pathogens, such as Scedosporium apiospermum and Scedosporium boydii .

However, unlike other fungal pathogens, little is known about the genome evolution of these organisms.

We sequenced two novel genomes of Scedosporium aurantiacum and Scedosporium minutisporum isolated from extreme, strongly anthropized environments.

We compared all the available Scedosporium and Microascaceae genomes, that we systematically annotated and characterized ex novo in most cases.

The genomes in this family were integrated in a Phylum-level comparison to infer the presence of putative, shared genomic traits in filamentous ascomycetes with pathogenic potential.

The analysis included the genomes of 100 environmental and clinical fungi, revealing poor evolutionary convergence of putative pathogenicity traits.

By contrast, several features in Microascaceae and Scedosporium were detected that might have a dual role in responding to environmental challenges and allowing colonization of the human body, including chitin, melanin and other cell wall related genes, proteases, glutaredoxins and magnesium transporters.

We found these gene families to be impacted by expansions, orthologous transposon insertions, and point mutations.

With RNA-seq, we demonstrated that most of these anciently impacted genomic features responded to the stress imposed by an antifungal compound (voriconazole) in the two environmental strains S. aurantiacum MUT6114 and S. minutisporum MUT6113.

Therefore, the present genomics and transcriptomics investigation stands on the edge between stress resistance and pathogenic potential, to elucidate whether fungi were pre-adapted to infect humans.

We highlight the strengths and limitations of genomics applied to opportunistic human pathogens, the multifactoriality of pathogenicity and resistance to drugs, and suggest a scenario where pressures other than anthropic contributed to forge filamentous human pathogens.