Vol3-1Art3

Ricardo Belmonte-Lopes  ^1,2,3, Bruno P.R. Lustosa  ^2,4, Vânia A. Vicente  ^2,4#, Yalong Li  ^5,6, Renata R. Gomes  ^2,4, Flávio Queiroz-Telles  ^4,7, Emanuel M. Souza  ⁸, Shuwen Deng  ⁹, Yinggai Song  ^5,6#

¹Radboudumc-CWZ Centre of Expertise for Mycology, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; ²Microbiological Collections of Paraná Network (CMRP), Pathology Department, Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil; ³Department of Ecology and Biological Sciences, Tuscia University, Viterbo, Italy; ⁴Graduate Program in Microbiology, Parasitology and Pathology, Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil; ⁵Research Center for Medical Mycology, Peking University, Beijing, China; ⁶Department of Dermatology and Venereology, Peking University First Hospital, Beijing, China; ⁷Hospital de Clínicas, Department of Public Health, Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil; ⁸Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department, Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil; ⁹Department of Medical Microbiology, People’s Hospital of Suzhou National New & Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone, Suzhou, China

Abstract

The epidemiology of the Fonsecaea etiologic agents of human chromoblastomycosis is investigated in relation to their evolution and genetic diversity, distribution patterns and effects of climate change, and  genomic differences that could be related to different kinds of systemic infections. To investigate the evolution of three species of the genus (F. monophora, F. nubica, and F. pedrosoi) most commonly associated to chromoblastomycosis, new nuclear and mitochondrial genomes of 28 strains were sequenced, assembled and annotated. The mitochondrial data were used to produce a dated tree to analyze the timing of divergence of the three species, with the nuclear genomes being used to investigate the species’ reproductive modes, and the presence of genes that occurred only in the species that cause systemic infections. Distribution data from publicly available databases and from the sequenced strains were used to predict areas suitable for the occurrence of these species in a scenario of climate change. Haplotype networks based on ribosomal and mitochondrial genes show significant diversity, in part associated with geographical distance. Fonsecaea nubica, which is hypothesized to have an African origin, showed the largest diversity and was interpreted as being ancestral. On the basis of 13 mitochondrial genes, the origin of the pathogenic strains was estimated at 40 Kya, with the divergence of the studied Fonsecaea species occurring concomitantly to human population movements out of Africa and colonization of the Americas. Slight differences in climatic suitability between species were noted, with the distribution of these species being predicted to increase with climate change. Analysis of mating type genes suggests a prevalently asexual reproductive mode for some species, while others two presenting heterothallic idiomorphs, with one strain being found to be homothallic. The prediction of the mating type genes also showed the possibility of the existence of fusion between genes MAT-1-1-4 and a truncated version of MAT-1-2, but these could represent annotation artifacts or non-functional genes. A detected virulence factor shared by the Fonsecaea species potentially causing deep infection was a SOCE-associated regulatory factor of calcium homeostasis, playing a role in extremotolerance. 

#Correspondence:
syg3515@163.com
vaniava63@gmail.com

Article info:
Received 13 February 2026
Revised 18 March 2026
Accepted 20 March 2026
Appeared online 27 March 2026
One Health Mycology 3(1): 20-36, 2026
doi.org/10.63049/OHM.26.31.3

Cite this article:
Belmonte-Lopes R, Lustosa BPR, Vicente VA, Li Y, Gomes RR , Queiroz-Telles F, Souza EM, Deng S, Song Y 2026. Past, current and future of three Fonsecaea agents of human chromoblastomycosis. One Health Mycology 3(1), 20-36
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Keywords:
chromoblastomycosis, black yeasts, Fonsecaea; epidemiology, mitochondrial genomes, distribution, climate change, calcium 

Article highlights:

• The evolution of the three main Fonsecaea strains (F. nubica,F. monophora, andF. pedrosoi)associated to human infections occurred in the last 40 kya, concomitantly with the movements of human populations out of Africa and the colonization of the Americas.
• Distribution suitability modeling suggests that the areas available for colonization by these strains should be increased by 2060−2080 under a scenario of global warming.
• The strains reported to cause brain infections (F. nubica and F. monophora) presented a gene identified as SOCE-associated regulatory factor of calcium homeostasis, which seems to represent a shared virulence factor.