Yeasts vectored by migratory birds collected in the Mediterranean island of Ustica and description of Phaffomyces usticensis f.a. sp. nov., a new species related to the cactus ecoclade
Nine yeast species belonging to genera Candida , Cryptococcus , Phaffomyces , Rhodotorula and Wickerhamomyces , and one species of Aureobasidium genus were isolated from the cloaca of migratory birds. Candida glabrata and C. inconspicua were the species most frequently isolated and Wickerhamomyces sylviae , which has recently been described as a new species isolated from bird cloaca, was again found. The majority of isolates showed the ability to grow up to 40 °C and/or at pH 3.0, two environmental conditions typical of the digestive tract of birds. The phylogenetic analysis of the D1/D2 domain of 26S rRNA gene placed the cultures of Phaffomyces in a new lineage that differed from the close…
Wickerhamomyces sylviae f.a., sp. nov., an ascomycetous yeast species isolated from migratory birds.
In the present work, we investigated the phylogenetic position and phenotypic characteristics of eight yeast isolates collected from migratory birds on the island of Ustica, Italy. A phylogenetic analysis based on the D1/D2 region of the large-subunit rRNA gene showed that all isolates clustered as a single separate lineage within the Wickerhamomyces clade. They exhibited distinct morphological and physiological characteristics and were clearly separated from their closest relatives, Wickerhamomyces lynferdii, Wickerhamomyces anomalus and Wickerhamomyces subpelliculosus, in blastn searches. On the basis of the isolation source, physiological features and molecular strain typing carried out …
Similarity boosted quantitative structure-activity relationship--a systematic study of enhancing structural descriptors by molecular similarity.
The concept of molecular similarity is one of the most central in the fields of predictive toxicology and quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) research. Many toxicological responses result from a multimechanistic process and, consequently, structural diversity among the active compounds is likely. Combining this knowledge, we introduce similarity boosted QSAR modeling, where we calculate molecular descriptors using similarities with respect to representative reference compounds to aid a statistical learning algorithm in distinguishing between different structural classes. We present three approaches for the selection of reference compounds, one by literature search and two by…