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FUNGAL GENETICS

Telomere transposon takeover in Cryptococcus

Nature Microbiology volume 7, pages 1108–1109 (2022)Cite this article

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Identification and analysis of mutator strains in the human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans show that natural loss of RNA interference triggers massive accumulation of Cnl1 retroelements at subtelomeric regions.

Evolution requires genetic change, yet as many mutations are deleterious to the fitness of an organism, there is not a simple relationship between mutation rate and adaptation. Furthermore, while mutation rates are known to vary between organisms, the causes and consequences of this are poorly understood in many systems, including medically important fungal pathogens. Such mechanisms may be germane to how key traits such as virulence and drug resistance evolve. It has been theorized that selection minimizes the mutation rate, while genetic drift, a non-adaptive mechanism, enables high mutation rates (produced by so-called mutator alleles) to become fixed in small populations1. Such a non-adaptive view does not rule out special cases in which the evolution of mutators can be adaptive in the short run (for example, under conditions of varying and strong selection) despite their long-term fitness costs2. In either scenario, one anticipates the presence of natural mutators in many populations.

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Fig. 1: Flow diagram of screening approach and key findings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Manning Y. Huang & Hiten D. Madhani

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  1. Manning Y. Huang
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  2. Hiten D. Madhani
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Correspondence to Hiten D. Madhani.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Huang, M.Y., Madhani, H.D. Telomere transposon takeover in Cryptococcus. Nat Microbiol 7, 1108–1109 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-022-01189-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-022-01189-7

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