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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, September 1999, p. 2920-2926, Vol. 37, No. 9
0095-1137/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Presence of alpha  and a Mating Types in Environmental and Clinical Collections of Cryptococcus neoformans var. gattii Strains from Australia

C. L. Halliday,1 T. Bui,1 M. Krockenberger,2 R. Malik,3 D. H. Ellis,4 and D. A. Carter1,*

Department of Microbiology,1 Department of Veterinary Anatomy and Pathology,2 and Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences,3 University of Sydney, NSW 2006, and Mycology Unit, Women's and Children's Hospital, North Adelaide, SA 5006,4 Australia

Received 1 March 1999/Returned for modification 15 April 1999/Accepted 26 May 1999

Cryptococcus neoformans var. gattii lives in association with certain species of eucalyptus trees and is a causative agent of cryptococcosis. It exists as two mating types, MATalpha and MATa, which is determined by a single-locus, two-allele system. In the closely related C. neoformans var. neoformans, the alpha  mating type has been found to outnumber its a counterpart by at least 30:1, but there have been very limited data on the proportions of each mating type in C. neoformans var. gattii. In the present study, specific PCR primers were designed to amplify two separate alpha -mating-type genes from C. neoformans var. gattii strains. These were used to survey for the presence of the two mating types in clinical and environmental collections of C. neoformans var. gattii strains from Australia. Sixty-eight of 69 clinical isolates produced both alpha  mating type-specific bands and were assumed to be of the alpha  mating type. The majority of environmental isolates were also of the alpha  mating type, but the a mating type was located in two separate areas. In one area, the a mating type outnumbered the alpha  mating type by 27:2, but in the second area, the ratio of the two mating types was close to the 50:50 ratio expected for sexual recombination.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Microbiology (GO8), University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia. Phone: 61-2-9351 5383. Fax: 61-2-9351 4571. E-mail: d.carter{at}microbio.usyd.edu.au.

Journal of Clinical Microbiology, September 1999, p. 2920-2926, Vol. 37, No. 9
0095-1137/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


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