Fungi between extremotolerance and opportunistic pathogenicity on humans

Numerous agents of infections in humans and other mammals are found among fungi that are able to survive extreme environmental conditions and to quickly adapt to novel habitats. Nevertheless, the relationship between opportunistic potential and polyextremotolerance was not yet studied systematically in fungi. Here, the link between polyextremotolerance and opportunistic pathogenicity is shown in a kingdom-wide phylogenetic analysis as a statistically significant co-occurrence of extremotolerance (e.g. osmotolerance and psychrotolerance) and opportunism at the level of fungal orders. In addition to extremotolerance, fungal opportunists share another characteristic—an apparent lack of specialised virulence traits. This is illustrated by a comparative genomic analysis of 20 dothideomycetous and eurotiomycetous black fungi. While the genomes of specialised fungal plant pathogens were significantly enriched in known…