Fungi are vital microbes present throughout the biosphere. Many species are essential decomposers in the ecosystem, breaking down organic materials and nourishing other lives. Moreover, some have directly influenced human civilization by providing beneficial products, such as edible mushrooms, brewer's yeast, baker's yeast, and antibiotics. However, it's important to note that this group of organisms can also have a "dark side". Each year, fungal pathogens cause approximately 150 million severe infections and 1.7 million deaths. The high rate of infection is compounded by the limited availability of antifungal drugs and the increasing prevalence of antifungal resistance. In response to the global burden of fungal diseases, the World Health Organization published a list of priority fungal pathogens in 2022 and highlighted strategies such as surveillance, sustainable research investments, and public health interventions to combat the increasing fungal threats. My PhD research has focused on surveillance and genomic analyses of several human fungal pathogens, particularly Candida auris. Candida auris is an emerging multidrug-resistant yeast that causes systemic infections with high mortality rates. While initially recognized as a nosocomial pathogen, our genomic analyses of strains isolated from clinical environments, tropical wetlands, fruit surfaces, and dog ears revealed potential transmission routes between diverse environments and patients, including a potential driver for the prevalence of antifungal resistance. Furthermore, our research indicated limited genetic exchange within and between lineages of Candida auris. Through genome-wide association analyses of global Candida auris strains, several known and novel genomic variants were identified associated with susceptibility to azoles, echinocandins, and amphotericin B. Overall, our studies underscore the importance of continuous surveillance to understand potential routes of Candida auris transmission and the urgent need for innovative approaches to treat multidrug-resistant Candida auris infections. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Yes / In this work, we describe the genome of Lysinibacillus sp. strain A1, which was isolated from tropical soil. Analysis of its genome sequence shows the presence of a gene encoding for a putative peptidase responsible for nitrogen compounds. / UM High Impact Research Grants (UMMOHE HIR Grant UM C/625/1/HIR/MOHE/CHAN/01, no. A000001- 50001; UM-MOHE HIR Grant UM C/625/1/HIR/MOHE/CHAN/14/1, no. H-50001-A000027)

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2007. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

A diversidade genética dos isolados de Chromobacterium sp. foi avaliada por Multilocus sequence analysis com base nas análises dos genes conservados rpoA, lepA, gyrB, fusA e rRNA 16S. A análise do gene rRNA 16S e MLSA agrupou os isolados no gênero Chromobacterium, entretanto, cinco dos isolados estão distantes filogeneticamente das linhagens tipo, C. violaceum e C. subtsugae, sugerindo duas novas espécies. Os extratos brutos, obtidos por soxhlet, dos isolados de Chromobacterium sp., testados em ensaios in vitro em células tumorais humanas, apresentaram atividades antitumorais potenciais e seletivas para determinadas linhagens celulares. Os extratos brutos e frações foram analisados por HPLC-DAD para avaliação da presença ou ausência da violaceína. Além disso, outros metábólitos secundários que não a violaceína podem estar relacionados à atividade antitumoral. / The genetic diversity of strains of Chromobacterium sp was evaluated by Multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) based on the analysis of conserved genes rpoA, recA, lepA, gyrB, fusA and rRNA 16S. The analysis of 16S ribosomal RNA gene grouped all isolates in the genus Chromobacterium, however, the five isolates are phylogenetically distant of type strain C. violaceum and C. subtsugae, suggesting new species. The crude extracts of the isolates from Chromobacterium sp., obtained by soxlhlet, evaluated in vitro tests on human tumor cells, showed potential and selective antitumor activities for certain cell lines. In addition, other secondary metabolites than violacein may be related with antitumor activity.

Approximate pattern matching problem is, given a reference sequence T, a pattern (query) Q, and a maximum allowed error e, to find all the substrings in the reference, such that the edit distance between the substrings and the pattern is smaller than or equal to the maximum allowed error. Though it is a well-studied problem in Computer Science, it gains a resurrection in Bioinformatics in recent years, largely due to the emergence of the next-generation high-throughput sequencing technologies. This thesis contributes in a novel generalized pattern matching framework, and applies it to solve pattern matching problems in general and alternative splicing detection (AS) in particular. AS is to map a large amount of next-generation sequencing short reads data to a reference human genome, which is the first and an important step in analyzing the sequenced data for further Biological analysis. The four parts of my research are as follows. / In the first part of my research work, we propose a novel deterministic pattern matching algorithm which applies Agrep, a well-known bit-parallel matching algorithm, to a truncated suffix array. Due to the linear cost of Agrep, the cost of our approach is linear to the number of characters processed in the truncated suffix array. We analyze the matching cost theoretically, and .obtain empirical costs from experiments. We carry out experiments using both synthetic and real DNA sequence data (queries) and search them in Chromosome-X of a reference human genome. The experimental results show that our approach achieves a speed-up of several magnitudes over standard Agrep algorithm. / In the fourth part, we focus on the seeding strategies for alternative splicing detection. We review the history of seeding-and-extending (SAE), and assess both theoretically and empirically the seeding strategies adopted in existing splicing detection tools, including Bowtie's heuristic and ABMapper's exact seedings, against the novel complementary quad-seeding strategy we proposed and the corresponding novel splice detection tool called CS4splice, which can handle inexact seeding (with errors) and all 3 types of errors including mismatch (substitution), insertion, and deletion. We carry out experiments using short reads (queries) of length 105bp comprised of several data sets consisting of various levels of errors, and align them back to a reference human genome (hg18). On average, CS4splice can align 88. 44% (recall rate) of 427,786 short reads perfectly back to the reference; while the other existing tools achieve much smaller recall rates: SpliceMap 48.72%, MapSplice 58.41%, and ABMapper 51.39%. The accuracies of CS4splice are also the highest or very close to the highest in all the experiments carried out. But due to the complementary quad-seeding that CS4splice use, it takes more computational resources, about twice (or more) of the other alternative splicing detection tools, which we think is practicable and worthy. / In the second part, we define a novel generalized pattern (query) and a framework of generalized pattern matching, for which we propose a heuristic matching algorithm. Simply speaking, a generalized pattern is Q 1G1Q2 ... Qc--1Gc--1 Qc, which consists of several substrings Q i and gaps Gi occurring in-between two substrings. The prototypes of the generalized pattern come from several real Biological problems that can all be modeled as generalized pattern matching problems. Based on a well-known seeding-and-extending heuristic, we propose a dual-seeding strategy, with which we solve the matching problem effectively and efficiently. We also develop a specialized matching tool called Gpattern-match. We carry out experiments using 10,000 generalized patterns and search them in a reference human genome (hg18). Over 98.74% of them can be recovered from the reference. It takes 1--2 seconds on average to recover a pattern, and memory peak goes to a little bit more than 1G. / In the third part, a natural extension of the second part, we model a real biological problem, alternative splicing detection, into a generalized pattern matching problem, and solve it using a proposed bi-directional seeding-and-extending algorithm. Different from all the other tools which depend on third-party tools, our mapping tool, ABMapper, is not only stand-alone but performs unbiased alignments. We carry out experiments using 427,786 real next-generation sequencing short reads data (queries) and align them back to a reference human genome (hg18). ABMapper achieves 98.92% accuracy and 98.17% recall rate, and is much better than the other state-of-the-art tools: SpliceMap achieves 94.28% accuracy and 78.13% recall rate;while TopHat 88.99% accuracy and 76.33% recall rate. When the seed length is set to 12 in ABMapper, the whole searching and alignment process takes about 20 minutes, and memory peak goes to a little bit more than 2G. / Ni, Bing. / Adviser: Kwong-Sak Leung. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-06, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical referencesTexture mapping (leaves 151-161). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

Among all existing alignment-free methods for comparing biological sequences, the sequence graphical representation provides a simple approach to view, sort, and compare gene structures. The aim of graphical representation is to display DNA or protein sequences graphically so that we can easily find out visually how similar or how different they are. Of course, only the visual comparison of sequences is not enough for the follow-up research work. We need more accurate comparison. This leads us to develop the application of the graphical representation for biological sequences. / In this thesis, we have two main contributions: (1) We construct a protein map with the help of our proposed new graphical representation for protein sequences. Each protein sequence can be represented as a point in this map, and cluster analysis of proteins can be performed for comparison between the points. This protein map can be used to mathematically specify the similarity of two proteins and predict properties of an unknown protein based on its amino acid sequence. (2) We construct a novel genome space with biological geometry, which is a subspace in RN . In this space each point corresponds to a genome. The natural distance between two points in the genome space reflects the biological distance between these two genomes. Our genome space will provide a new powerful tool for analyzing the classification of genomes and their phylogenetic relationships. / Yu, Chenglong. / Adviser: Luk Hing Sun. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 72-04, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-64). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Centrolobium paraense Tul. conhecida popularmente como pau-rainha é uma leguminosa arbórea que ocorre em ilhas de mata, florestas de transição e matas de galerias das savanas de Roraima. Esta leguminosa se beneficia do processo de fixação biológica de nitrogênio (FBN) através da simbiose com bactérias do grupo rizóbio. No entanto, pouco se sabe sobre a diversidade e a eficiência dessas bactérias em simbiose com pau-rainha. Este estudo teve como objetivo a caracterização de rizóbios associados às raízes de pau-rainha em Roraima, bem como a avaliação da eficiência simbiótica na promoção do crescimento de mudas através da FBN. Para isso, plantas de pau-rainha foram cultivadas em solos coletados em ilhas de mata localizadas nos municípios de Mucajaí, Bonfim, Boa Vista e Normandia para obtenção dos nódulos, e posterior isolamento das bactérias em meio de cultura. As bactérias foram caracterizadas morfologicamente e agrupadas de acordo com os perfis gerados. Representantes de cada grupo foram avaliados quanto à capacidade de nodulação utilizando o feijão-caupi como planta hospedeira. Os que apresentaram resultados positivos foram caracterizados geneticamente através da técnica de BOX-PCR e sequenciamento parcial do gene 16S rRNA. Em seguida uma nova autenticação foi realizada, e os isolados que repetiram os resultados anteriores ou apresentaram similaridade com espécies reconhecidamente nodulíferas foram selecionados para teste de eficiência em pau-rainha. Para avaliar a eficiência da FBN, os rizóbios foram utilizados na inoculação de plântulas de pau-rainha sob condições estéreis de casa de vegetação durante 100 dias, procedendo à análise estatística para os parâmetros: nitrogênio total, massa seca da parte aérea, área foliar, massa seca de raiz, número de folíolos, altura da planta, diâmetro do caule, massa seca de nódulos e número de nódulos. Os identificados como Bradyrhizobium foram avaliados através do sequenciamento de cinco genesglnII, gyrB, rpoB, recA e dnaKpara análise de sequência multilocus (MLSA). De um total de 355 nódulos coletados, foram obtidos 178 isolados, sendo a maioria de crescimento lento com capacidade de alcalinizar o meio de cultura, compatíveis com o gênero Bradyrhizobium. A partir da caracterização morfológica foi gerado um dendrograma onde se constatou a formação de nove grupos com perfis distintos. Quarenta isolados foram selecionados para a autenticação e trinta e seis foram capazes de induzir a nodulação. A análise do BOX-PCR revelou-se que estes isolados apresentam pouca semelhança entre eles. No entanto a análise do sequenciamento do gene 16S rRNA, revelou que a maioria dos isolados pertenciam ao gênero Bradyrhizobium. Estes confirmaram a capacidade de nodulação e foram selecionados para ensaio de eficiência em pau-rainha juntamente com quatro isolados identificados comoRhizobium tropici e Pleomorphomonas oryzae. Os isolados pertencentes ao gênero Bradyrhizobium foram os mais eficientes, com destaque para os isolados ERR 326, ERR 399 e ERR 435 que proporcionaram os melhores resultados em todas as avaliações. A partir da MLSA ficou evidenciado que os isolados apresentaram grandes divergências com as estirpes de referência de Bradyrhizobium, indicando haver espécies novas colonizando o pau-rainha. / Centrolobium paraense Tul. popularly known as wood-queen is a leguminous tree that occurs in islands of forest, transition forest and gallery forests of Roraima savannas. This legume benefits from the process of biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) through symbiosis with rhizobia bacteria group. However, little is known about the diversity and efficiency of these bacteria in symbiosis with wood-queen. This study aimed to characterize rhizobia associated with the roots of wood-queen in Roraima, as well as evaluating the symbiotic effectiveness in promoting the growth of seedlings by FBN. For this, plants of wood-queen were grown in soils collected in forest islands located in the municipalities of Mucajaí, Bonfim, Boa Vista and Normandia to obtain the nodules, and subsequent isolation of bacteria in culture medium. The bacteria were morphologically characterized and grouped according to the profiles generated. Representatives of each group were evaluated for nodulation using cowpea as host plant, and those who tested positive were genetically characterized using the technique of BOX-PCR and partial sequencing of the 16S rRNA. Then a new authentication was performed, and that the isolated or repeated previous results showed similarity with known nodulating species were selected to test efficiency in wood-queen. To evaluate the efficiency of BNF, the strains were used to inoculate seedlings wood-queen under sterile conditions in a greenhouse for 100 days, carrying out statistical analysis for theparameters: total nitrogen, shoot dry weight, leaf area, root dry weight, number of leaves, plant height, stem diameter, dry mass and number of nodes. Those identified as Bradyrhizobium were evaluated by sequencing five genes glnII, gyrB, rpoB, recA and dnaK for multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA). From a total of 355 nodes collected were obtained 178 isolates, most slow growing with capacity to alkalinize the culture medium, compatible with the genus Bradyrhizobium. From the morphological characterization of a dendrogram was generated which demonstrated the formation of nine groups with distinct profiles. Forty isolates were selected for authentication and thirty six were able to induce nodulation. A BOX-PCR analysis revealed that these isolates show little similarity between them. However the analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequencing revealed that most isolates belonged to the genus Bradyrhizobium. These confirmed the nodulation and were selected for assay efficiency wood queen with four isolates identified as Rhizobium tropici and Pleomorphomonas oryzae. The isolates belonging to the genus Bradyrhizobium were the most efficient, especially for isolates ERR 326, ERR 399 and ERR 435 that provided the best results in all evaluations. From the MLSA was evident that the isolates showed large differences with the reference strains of Bradyrhizobium, indicating a new species colonizing the wood-queen.

A diversidade genética dos isolados de Chromobacterium sp. foi avaliada por Multilocus sequence analysis com base nas análises dos genes conservados rpoA, lepA, gyrB, fusA e rRNA 16S. A análise do gene rRNA 16S e MLSA agrupou os isolados no gênero Chromobacterium, entretanto, cinco dos isolados estão distantes filogeneticamente das linhagens tipo, C. violaceum e C. subtsugae, sugerindo duas novas espécies. Os extratos brutos, obtidos por soxhlet, dos isolados de Chromobacterium sp., testados em ensaios in vitro em células tumorais humanas, apresentaram atividades antitumorais potenciais e seletivas para determinadas linhagens celulares. Os extratos brutos e frações foram analisados por HPLC-DAD para avaliação da presença ou ausência da violaceína. Além disso, outros metábólitos secundários que não a violaceína podem estar relacionados à atividade antitumoral. / The genetic diversity of strains of Chromobacterium sp was evaluated by Multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) based on the analysis of conserved genes rpoA, recA, lepA, gyrB, fusA and rRNA 16S. The analysis of 16S ribosomal RNA gene grouped all isolates in the genus Chromobacterium, however, the five isolates are phylogenetically distant of type strain C. violaceum and C. subtsugae, suggesting new species. The crude extracts of the isolates from Chromobacterium sp., obtained by soxlhlet, evaluated in vitro tests on human tumor cells, showed potential and selective antitumor activities for certain cell lines. In addition, other secondary metabolites than violacein may be related with antitumor activity.

Sequence-function relationship is a fundamental question for many branches of modern biomedical research. It connects the primary sequence of proteins to the function of proteins and fitness of organisms, holding answers for critical questions such as functional consequences of mutations identified in whole genome sequencing and adaptive potential of fast evolving pathogenic viruses and microbes. Many different approaches have been developed to delineate the genotype-phenotype map for different proteins, but are generally limited by their throughput or precision. To systematically quantify the fitness of large numbers of mutations, I modified a novel high throughput mutational scanning approach (EMPIRIC) to investigate the fitness landscape of mutations in important regions of essential proteins from the yeast or RNA viruses. Using EMPIRIC, I analyzed the interplay of the expression level and sequence of Hsp90 on the yeast growth and revealed latent effect of mutations at reduced expression levels of Hsp90. I also examined the functional constraint on the receptor binding site of the Env of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and uncovered enhanced receptor binding capacity as a common pathway for adaptation of HIV to laboratory conditions. Moreover, I explored the adaptive potential of neuraminidase (NA) of influenza A virus to a NA inhibitor, oseltamivir, and identified novel oseltamivir resistance mutations with distinct molecular mechanisms. In summary, I applied a high throughput functional genomics approach to map the sequence-function relationship in various systems and examined the evolutionary constraints and adaptive potential of essential proteins ranging from molecular chaperones to drug-targetable viral proteins.

The primary amino acid sequence of a protein governs its specific cellular functions. Since the cracking of the genetic code in the late 1950’s, it has been possible to predict the amino acid sequence of a given protein from the DNA sequence of a gene. Nevertheless, the ability to predict a protein’s function from its primary sequence remains a great challenge in biology. In order to address this problem, we combined recent advances in next generation sequencing technologies with systematic mutagenesis strategies to assess the function of thousands of protein variants in a single experiment. Using this strategy, my dissertation describes the effects of most possible single point mutants in the multifunctional Ubiquitin protein in yeast. The effects of these mutants on the essential activation of ubiquitin by the ubiquitin activating protein (E1, Uba1p) as well as their effects on overall yeast growth were measured. Ubiquitin mutants defective for E1 activation were found to correlate with growth defects, although in a non-linear fashion. Further examination of select point mutants indicated that E1 activation deficiencies predict downstream defects in Ubiquitin function, resulting in the observed growth phenotypes. These results indicate that there may be selective pressure for the activity of the E1enzyme to selectively activate ubiquitin protein variants that do not result in functional downstream defects. Additionally, I will describe the use of similar techniques to discover drug resistant mutants of the oncogenic protein BRAFV600E in human melanoma cell lines as an example of the widespread applicability of our strategy for addressing the relationship between protein function and biological fitness.