作者
Antonis Rokas, Matthew E Mead, Jacob L Steenwyk, Nicholas H Oberlies, Gustavo H Goldman
发表日期
2020/2/27
来源
PLoS pathogens
卷号
16
期号
2
页码范围
e1008315
出版商
Public Library of Science
简介
Species in the genus Aspergillus are saprophytic filamentous fungi that are most commonly found in soil and litter environments of subtropical and warm temperate latitudes [1]. Inhalation of asexual spores produced by Aspergillus fumigatus and a few other species in the genus cause a group of diseases collectively referred to as aspergillosis [2]. The most severe form of aspergillosis is invasive aspergillosis, which primarily affects individuals with compromised immune systems or preexisting lung conditions [3]. Since drugs targeting invasive aspergillosis are not always effective due to our lack of understanding of how they function inside the human host [4] and the evolution of drug resistance [5, 6], infected individuals suffer high morbidity and mortality [7]. Collectively, Aspergillus fungi affect millions of patients and cause hundreds of thousands of life-threatening infections every year [8, 9]. Not all pathogenic Aspergillus species exhibit the same infection rates [10, 11]. Approximately 70% of all Aspergillus infections are caused by A. fumigatus, whereas the remaining 30% of infections stem from other species in the genus [12]. Some of these other pathogenic species–for example, Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus niger, and Aspergillus terreus–are distantly related to A. fumigatus [12]; each of these three species belong to different Aspergillus sections (note “section” is a taxonomic rank in-between the genus and species ranks) and show extensive genomic divergence [13]. However, there are also pathogenic Aspergillus species, such as Aspergillus lentulus and Aspergillus udagawae, that belong to the same section as A. fumigatus (section Fumigati …
引用总数
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