The Evolving Species Concepts Used for Yeasts: From Phenotypes and Genomes to Speciation Networks

Author: mycolabadmin
2021-06-26
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Summary

This research reviews how scientists identify and classify different species of yeasts, showing how methods have evolved from simple visual observations to complex genetic analysis. The findings impact everyday life in several ways: • Helps ensure food and beverage production safety by accurately identifying beneficial and harmful yeasts • Improves medical diagnosis and treatment by better identifying pathogenic yeast species • Enables better quality control in industrial fermentation processes like brewing and baking • Advances our understanding of antibiotic resistance in pathogenic yeasts • Supports development of new biotechnology applications using specific yeast strains

Background

Species concepts for yeasts have evolved significantly over time. Initially, phenotypic characteristics like morphology and growth profiles were used. Later, the biological species concept incorporating mating experiments was added. DNA similarity measurements became more widely applied with sequencing technology, leading to sequence-based species concepts using ribosomal DNA comparisons. Currently, phylogenetic species concepts using rDNA and other gene sequences are universally applied in fungal taxonomy.

Objective

To review how different species concepts have been applied to understand yeast diversity over time and examine the current state of yeast taxonomy. The paper aims to address the main species concepts used in yeast taxonomy, experimental approaches to test biological species concepts, the role of hybrids, impact of comparative genomics, use of DNA sequences for species identification including barcoding, and practical aspects of describing yeast species.

Results

The review found that multiple species concepts have been valuable in understanding yeast diversity. Genome information is becoming increasingly important, with complete genomes providing better insights than draft versions. Hybridization was found to be relatively common across all major yeast lineages. The authors found that future studies may need to shift from viewing species as isolated clusters to viewing them as part of interconnected speciation networks linked by genetic processes like hybridization.

Conclusion

The future understanding of yeast species boundaries will likely take the form of small speciation networks that relate to other networks through processes like introgression and hybridization. This approach will better address the genetic cohesiveness of species complexes than current tree-like models. The authors recommend using complete rather than draft genomes for understanding species evolution and genome dynamics. They emphasize that testing species hypotheses requires thorough experimental validation using genetics, ecology, and comparative genomics approaches.

Published in:Fungal Diversity,
Study Type:Review,
Source: 10.1007/s13225-021-00475-9