Concordance of gene genealogies reveals reproductive isolation in the pathogenic fungus Coccidioides immitis.

ABSTRACT: Simple cladogenetic theory suggests that gene genealogies can be used to detect mixis in a population and delineate reproductively isolated groups within sexual taxa. We have taken this approach in a study of Coccidioides immitis, an ascomycete fungus responsible for a recent epidemic of coccidioidomycosis (Valley fever) in California. To test whether this fungus represents a single sexual species throughout its entire geographic range, we have compared genealogies from fragments of five nuclear genes. The five genealogies show multiple incompatibilities indicative of sex, but also share a branch that partitions the isolates into two reproductively isolated taxa, one centered in California and the other outside California. We conclude that coccidioidomycosis can be caused by two distinct n

SUBMITTER: Koufopanou V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC24704 | biostudies-literature | 1997 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature