Cryptococcus adeliensis

Abstract: Rimek and colleagues ([1][1]) recently published an account of the first case of meningitis caused by Cryptococcus adeliensis in a German patient with acute myeloid leukemia. C. adeliensis was previously described as a new cryptococcal species isolated from algae in Antarctica ([2][2]). In the

Abstract: Cryptococcus adeliensis was initially described as a psycrophilic species containing a single strain CBS 8351(T) isolated from decayed algae in Terre Adelie (Antartida). Later, a second strain of this species was isolated from an immunosuppressed patient affected by leukaemia in Germany and recently several strains from this species have been found in human patients and pigeon droppings of the same country. In this study, we isolated from sheep droppings in Spain a xylanolytic strain named LEVX01 that was phenotypically related to the strain CBS 8351(T) and showed a 100% similarity in the D1/D2 domain and 5.8S-ITS region sequences with respect to the remaining described strains of C. adeliensis. These findings suggest that this species has a wide geographical distribution and that the animal faeces are a common habitat for C. adeliensis. The chemotaxonomic analyses showed the absence of detectable amounts of xylose in the cell walls of the strains LEVX01 and CBS8351(T) in contrast to other Cryptococcus species. Interestingly, the ultrastructural study showed the presence of fimbriae in these two strains that could be involved in the attachment to the host cells and, as occurs in Candida albicans, they could also be a pathogenicity factor for the man.

Abstract: The molecular taxonomic analysis of yeasts isolated from Verbascum flowers collected in central Georgia identified strains that could be assigned to the species Cryptococcus adeliensis, Cryptococcus magnus and Moniliella megachiliensis detected previously also in substrates associated with insects and other animals and a hitherto undescribed species for which the name Candida verbasci is proposed. The new species forms slightly pink colonies, propagates by mostly unipolar budding, forms invasive pseudomycelium, and the sequences of its D1/D2 LSU rRNA genes and ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 regions indicate close phylogenetic relationship with a group of species that form a cluster basal to the Candida albicans/Lodderomyces elongisporus clade. The type strain is 11-1055(T). It has been deposited in Centralbureau voor Schimmelcultures (Utrecht, the Netherlands) as CBS 12699(T), the National Collection of Agricultural and Industrial Microorganisms (Budapest, Hungary) as NCAIM Y.02048(T) and the Culture Collection of Yeasts (Bratislava, Slovakia) as CCY 29-185-1(T). The GenBank accession numbers for nucleotide sequences of the C. verbasci type strain are: JX515981 (D1/D2 domain of the 26S rRNA gene) and JX515982 (ITS1-5.8S-ITS2). Mycobank: MB 801391.