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Record W4417076784 · doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1011844

Genomic evidence for a-α heterothallic and α-α unisexual mating and recombination in an environmental Cryptococcus deneoformans population

2025· article· en· W4417076784 on OpenAlexafffund
Megan Hitchcock, Veronica Thorn, Himeshi Samarasinghe, Sheng Sun, Joseph Heitman, Jianping Xu

Bibliographic record

VenuePLoS Genetics · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicFungal Infections and Studies
Canadian institutionsMcMaster University
FundersNational Institute of Allergy and Infectious DiseasesNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
KeywordsHeterothallicMating typeMitochondrial DNAGenomePopulationSingle-nucleotide polymorphismMatingRecombinationNuclear geneNuclear DNA

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Cryptococcus deneoformans is a human fungal pathogen capable of both a-α and α-α mating and sexual reproduction in laboratory settings. However, the extent of a-α and α-α sexual reproductions in natural populations remain unexplored. Here we analyzed the whole-genome sequences of 24 environmental strains of C. deneoformans from western Saudi Arabia, including one MATa and 23 MATα isolates, with 15 MATα isolates belonging to multi-locus sequence type ST160 as defined by their combined DNA sequences at seven loci. To identify signatures for a-α and α-α reproduction, three samples were analyzed: total, MATα, and ST160. For each subpopulation, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were identified for both the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes and subjected to four-gamete tests. In the total population and the MATα subpopulation, variable proportions of SNP pairs within as well as between the nuclear and the mitochondrial genomes showed evidence for recombination. Though no mitogenome SNPs were found among the 15 strains of ST160, the nuclear genome showed clear evidence for recombination, including among SNPs within the MATα mating type locus. In addition, the nuclear genome SNP pairs located further apart on the same chromosome showed a greater frequency of recombination in all three sample types. In contrast, mitogenome SNPs involved in recombination were mainly located in two large genomic regions. Together, these results provide robust evidence for both a-α and α-α sexual reproduction within this environmental population of C. deneoformans.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.048
Threshold uncertainty score0.248

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.067
GPT teacher head0.342
Teacher spread0.275 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations2
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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