A revision of malbranchea-like fungi from clinical specimens in the United States of America reveals unexpected novelty

Abstract

The fungi of the order Onygenales can cause important human infections; however, their taxonomy and worldwide occurrence is still little known. We have studied and identified a representative number of clinical fungi belonging to that order from a reference laboratory in the USA. A total of 22 strains isolated from respiratory tract (40%) and human skin and nails (27.2%) showed a malbranchea-like morphology. Six genera were phenotypically and molecularly identified, i.e. Auxarthron/Malbranchea (68.2%), Arachnomyces (9.1%), Spiromastigoides (9.1%), and Currahmyces (4.5%), and two newly proposed genera (4.5% each). Based on the results of the phylogenetic study, we synonymized Auxarthron with Malbranchea, and erected two new genera: Pseudoarthropsis and Pseudomalbranchea. New species proposed are: Arachnomyces bostrychodes, A. graciliformis, Currahmyces sparsispora, Malbranchea gymnoascoides, M. multiseptata, M. stricta, Pseudoarthropsis crassispora, Pseudomalbranchea gemmata, and Spiromastigoides geomycoides, along with a new combination for Malbranchea gypsea. The echinocandins showed the highest in vitro antifungal activity against the studied isolates, followed by terbinafine and posaconazole; in contrast, amphotericin B, fluconazole, itraconazole and 5-fluorocytosine were less active or lacked in vitro activity against these fungi.

Antidiabetic Potential of a Trimeric Anthranilic Acid Peptide Isolated from Malbranchea flocciformis

“…Chemical ontology analysis of the data showed the presence of seven classes of compounds in 12 matching clusters. Detailed analysis of several nodes (Figures 3B and 3C) allowed the manual and automatic annotation of the isolated compounds 1, 3, and 4 and a series of compounds (5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15) from an in-house database of Malbranchea metabolites (Table 1). Thus, the compounds manually annotated found in M. flocciformis extract have also been isolated in some other Malbranchea spp.…”

“…: Rosigenin (5) was previously isolated from M. flavorosea; malfilanol B (6), malfilamentosides A and B (7 and 8), malsterosides A and C (9 and 10), gotjawalide (11), gymnascolide A (1), and N-6-isopentenyladenosine (12; prenylated derivative of 2) from M. filamentosa; [8,[11][12][13][14] compound 1 was also found in M. dendritica; [9] and albolutein C (13) in M. albolutea. [7] Finally, the fungal metabolites cyclo D-Trp-L-Pro (14) and mucorisocoumarin (15) were also annotated by GNPS. Previous studies [9] have shown gymnoascolide A (1) as a promising bioactive compound due to its good antidiabetic properties.…”

Unravelling the fungal darkness in a tropical cave: richness and the description of one new genus and six new species

“…2020 and Wang et al . 2020 , Malbranchea – Rodríguez-Andrade et al . 2021 , Pseudohumicola – Wang et al .…”

“…Notes : Based on BLASTn searches, the ITS sequences of Malbranchea cavernosa have a low identity of 96.10 % with the ex-type strain of M. chinense CGMCC 3.19572 and with Auxarthron thaxteri CBS 297.63 (a species synonymized with Malbranchea umbrina , Rodríguez-Andrade et al . 2021 ).…”

Phylogenetic and ecological reevaluation of the order Onygenales

“…The genus Auxarthron has been described with mesh-like gymnothecia, welldifferentiated thick-walled peridial hyphae with knuckle-joint septal enlargements (usually in 1-3 septa) (except A. concentricum which lacks both knuckle-joints and peridial appendages), punctate ascospores and an asexual morph in Malbranchea (Orr and Kuehn 1963b;Currah 1985;Sigler et al 2002a;Sarrocco et al 2015). The genus was classified as a monophyletic group in Onygenaceae (Currah 1985;Sarrocco et al 2015;Rodríguez-Andrade et al 2021). However, in the present study, the group was considered as a separate family Auxarthraceae, because this monophyletic group was found to be distant from the type species of Onygenaceae (Fig.…”