Harboring Starships: The Accumulation of Large Horizontal Gene Transfers in Domesticated and Pathogenic Fungi.

ABSTRACT: Human-related environments, including food and clinical settings, present microorganisms with atypical and challenging conditions that necessitate adaptation. Several cases of novel horizontally acquired genetic material associated with adaptive traits have been recently described, contained within giant transposons named Starships. While a handful of Starships have been identified in domesticated species, their abundance has not yet been systematically explored in human-associated fungi. Here, we investigated whether Starships have shaped the genomes of two major genera of fungi occurring in food and clinical environments, Aspergillus and Penicillium, providing a unique opportunity to study several independent events of adaptation to similar niches. We found in all cases that the domestic

SUBMITTER: O'Donnell S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12256816 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature