Current Status of the Diagnostic and Genomics of Cryptococcus neoformans/C. gattii Species Complex

Copyright: © 2015 Silva D , et al . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Cryptococcosis is a systemic human and animal infection that has emerged as a life-threatening opportunistic mycoses since the advent of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), caused by the Cryptococcus neoformans/C. gattii species complex that comprises the pathogenic cluster, while other species of the yeast can sporadically be pathogenic to humans [1]. Moreover, biochemical differences subdivide C. neoformans into two varieties, C. neoformans var. grubii and C. neoformans var. neoformans, whereas differences in capsule polysacharides further subdivide the species into three serotypes, A, D and AD. Recently, a comprehensive molecular-based study proposed a rearrangement of the complex C. neoformans/C. gattii into seven species: C. neoformans (as var. grubii), C. deneoformans (as var. neoformans), as well as C. gattii, C. bacillisporus, C. deuterogattii, C. tetragattii, C. decagattii (as a subdivision of C. gattii) [2], still under evaluation by the scientific community. The former variety, C. neoformans var. gattii, is now recognized as a separate species, C. gattii, with serotypes B and C [3-7], based mostly on molecular methods and on the absence of genetic recombination between var. neoformans and var. gattii [2].