Unveiling Trichosporon austroamericanum sp. nov.: A Novel Emerging Opportunistic Basidiomycetous Yeast Species
Elaine Cristina Francisco, Marie Desnos‐Ollivier, Chendo Dieleman, Teun Boekhout, Daniel Wagner de Castro Lima Santos, José Medina‐Pestana, Arnaldo Lopes Colombo, Ferry Hagen
Abstract
During an epidemiological survey, a potential novel species within the basidiomycetous yeast genus Trichosporon was observed. The clinical strain was obtained from a urine sample taken from a Brazilian kidney transplant recipient. The strain was molecularly identified using the intergenic spacer (IGS1) ribosomal DNA locus and a subsequent phylogenetic analysis showed that multiple strains that were previously reported by other studies shared an identical IGS1-genotype most closely related to that of Trichosporon inkin. However, none of these studies provided an in-depth characterization of the involved strains to describe it as a new taxon. Here, we present the novel clinically relevant yeast for which we propose the name Trichosporon austroamericanum sp. nov. (holotype CBS H-24937). T. austroamericanum can be distinguished from other siblings in the genus Trichosporon using morphological, physiological, and phylogenetic characters.