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. 2012 Jan;21(1):57-70.
doi: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2011.05364.x. Epub 2011 Nov 22.

Evidence for genetic differentiation and variable recombination rates among Dutch populations of the opportunistic human pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus

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Evidence for genetic differentiation and variable recombination rates among Dutch populations of the opportunistic human pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus

Corné H W Klaassen et al. Mol Ecol. 2012 Jan.

Abstract

As the frequency of antifungal drug resistance continues to increase, understanding the genetic structure of fungal populations, where resistant isolates have emerged and spread, is of major importance. Aspergillus fumigatus is an ubiquitously distributed fungus and the primary causative agent of invasive aspergillosis (IA), a potentially lethal infection in immunocompromised individuals. In the last few years, an increasing number of A. fumigatus isolates has evolved resistance to triazoles, the primary drugs for treating IA infections. In most isolates, this multiple-triazole-resistance (MTR) phenotype is caused by mutations in the cyp51A gene, which encodes the protein targeted by the triazoles. We investigated the genetic differentiation and reproductive mode of A. fumigatus in the Netherlands, the country where the MTR phenotype probably originated, to determine their role in facilitating the emergence and distribution of resistance genotypes. Using 20 genome-wide neutral markers, we genotyped 255 Dutch isolates including 25 isolates with the MTR phenotype. In contrast to previous reports, our results show that Dutch A. fumigatus genotypes are genetically differentiated into five distinct populations. Four of the five populations show significant linkage disequilibrium, indicative of an asexual reproductive mode, whereas the fifth population is in linkage equilibrium, indicative of a sexual reproductive mode. Notably, the observed genetic differentiation among Dutch isolates does not correlate with geography, although all isolates with the MTR phenotype nest within a single, predominantly asexual, population. These results suggest that both reproductive mode and genetic differentiation contribute to the structure of Dutch A. fumigatus populations and are probably shaping the evolutionary dynamics of drug resistance in this potentially deadly pathogen.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
(A) Sampling location of the 156 genotypes from the Netherlands and (B) the chromosomal location of the TR/L98H (MTR) locus and the 20 markers used in the present study. In panel A, city and number of isolates and genotypes collected per city, respectively (in parentheses), are as follows: A: Leeuwarden (8, 3), B: Groningen (1, 1), C: Alkmaar (10, 9), D: Haarlem (7, 5), E: Amsterdam (19, 10), F: Enschede (15, 9), G: Utrecht (21, 7), H: Arnhem (6, 3), I: Rotterdam (45, 29), J: Nijmegen (102, 68), K: Goes (7, 5), L: Veldhoven (9, 4), and M: Heerlen (5, 3). The chromosome length scale (in million base pairs or Mbp) is shown on top of panel B.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Both STRUCTURE (panels A and B) and DAPC (panels C and D) analyses of 156 non-clonally related clinical and environmental genotypes identify the existence of five A. fumigatus populations in the Netherlands. (A) STRUCTURE analysis estimates that the optimal predicted number of populations K for our set of genotypes is five. This inference is supported by both the average log probability (LnP(D)) of each K value (black line) and by the ad hoc statistic ΔK (grey line). (B) The STRUCTURE based assignment of 156 genotypes into the five A. fumigatus populations. Each column on the X-axis corresponds to a different genotype. The Y-axis represents an individual’s membership coefficient to each population. White stars indicate multi-triazole resistant (MTR) individuals. STRUCTURE populations 1 – 5 are indicated by red, green, blue, yellow and pink color, respectively. (C) DAPC analysis estimates that the optimal predicted number of populations K for our set of genotypes is five. The Y-axis corresponds to the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), a goodness of fit measurement calculated for each K. The lowest BIC value (K = 5) indicates the optimal number of populations. (D) DAPC clustering of the five populations using the first two principal components (Y-axis and X-axis, respectively). The first four eigenvalue components are show in the lower left panel. DAPC populations 1 – 5 are indicated by red, green, blue, yellow and pink color, respectively and are highly similar to STRUCTURE delineated populations.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Unbiased haploid diversity (uh) measures of the five A. fumigatus populations and other representative Aspergillus species. Microsatellite-based uh values from populations of other representative Aspergillus species are from the following studies: A. flavus (Tran-Dinh & Carter 2000), A. parasiticus (Tran-Dinh & Carter 2000), and two A. nidulans populations (Hosid et al. 2008).
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Linkage disequilibrium (LD) patterns of the five A. fumigatus populations. The LD patterns of the five A. fumigatus populations. LD was determined by calculating the Index of Association (Ia) for all locus pairs independently for all populations. White, grey and black boxes represent loci in equilibrium, loci in significant LD, and fixed loci, respectively.

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