Section: New Results

Clavispora lusitaniae genome

Clavispora lusitaniae is an ubiquist environmental ascomycetous yeast, with no known specific ecological niche. It can be isolated from different substrates, such as soils, waters, plants, and gastrointestinal tracts of many animals including birds, mammals and humans. In immunocompromised hosts, C. lusitaniae can be pathogenic and is responsible for about 1% of invasive candidiasis, particularly in pediatric and onco-haematology patients [24].

So far, two strains have had their genomes sequenced: ATCC 42720, isolated from the blood of a patient with myeloid leukemia [29], and MTCC 1001, a self-fertile strain isolated from citrus [27]. We performed the genome assembly of the C. lusitaniae type strain CBS 6936 [37], isolated from citrus peel juice.

Illumina sequences were obtained by our collaborator (T. Noel, UMR 5234 CNRS Université Bordeaux) and we ran the assemblies using several assemblers, e.g. MINIA [21], MIRA [20] and SPAdes [19]. Each assembly gave sequence scaffolds colinear with the already sequence genome of ATCC 42720. However the number of scaffolds varied dramatically in assemblies. SPAdes gave the best results by an order of magnitude (MINIA: 2913, MIRA: 930, SPAdes: 53). This last assembly will serve as a basis for further experiments and SNP detections in mutants strains derived from CBS 6936.

This work is a collaboration between Pleiade team, UMR 5234 CNRS/Université de Bordeaux, and MIAT INRA.