Next Generation Sequencing Reveals Different Gene Expression Profiles Between Two Strains of Histoplasma capsulatum

Histoplasma capsulatum is a thermal dimorphic fungus can cause respiratory disease when inhaled by individuals. Server and lethal disease will occur to healthy people acquiring a large inoculum or those who are immunocompromised. H. capsulatum species are very diverse and subdivided into geographically distinct phylogenetic lineages. Strain G217 belongs to chemotype I, while strain G217B belongs to chemotype II. The classification of chemotypes is based on the presence of alpha-(1,3)-glucan polysaccharide on the yeast cell. Previous studies showed that alpha-(1,3)-glucan synthesis genes are essential for the full virulence of chemotype II yeast strains. However, alpha-(1,3)-glucan is not required by chemotype I strains to achieve full virulence. These two isolates differ in acute and chronic disease potential and surfactant-sensitivity, which suggest that they have different mechanism in virulence, infectivity and pathogenesis. The genome comparison revieled nucleotide sequence and structural diversity between the two strains. Large regions of synteny, indicates a difference in the transcriptom is another important contributor to the diversity. Here, we present gene modeling, genome-wide gene structure and expression level comparisons achieved by RNA-sequencing.