Genetic diversity and antifungal susceptibility profile of ten clinical isolates of Candida spp

• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Catarina Almeida e
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/30757
• topic: Candida spp.; Whole-genome sequencing; Polymorphisms; Antifungal susceptibility testing

Candida species are the most common agents of fungal infection, being responsible for both superficial and systemic infections. In recent years, there has been an increase in antifungal-resistant Candida strains, which complicates the treatment of these infections. In order to characterize 10 clinical isolates of Candida, based on their sequence-type, single nucleotide polymorphisms, and antifungal resistance, the genome sequence of the isolates was obtained with MinION (Oxford Nanopore Technologies, UK), and the antifungal susceptibility profile was obtained through broth microdilution techniques and Etest (bioMérieux, France). The analysis of the genome of the isolates showed that one of the isolates did not correspond to C. albicans, being C. glabrata. SNPs were identified in genes that were exclusive for vaginal exudate samples, as well for samples originated from the oral cavity. The frequency of genes with missense SNPs involved in molecular processes and biological functions was significantly enriched to the background frequency in those gene ontology sets. All isolates were susceptible to all antifungals tested, and had none of the resistance-associated polymorphisms found in literature, so there was an agreement between genotype and phenotype.