Pneumocystis Genome Project

Project Information

Pneumocystis are obligate fungal pathogens that are adapted to specific host species. Pneumocystis jirovecii causes life-threatening pneumonia in immunosuppressed humans, especially those with untreated HIV infection/AIDS.The closely related species Pneumocystis murina is a yeast-like fungus that causes pulmonary infections in mice.  P. murina-infected mice serve as a model for human disease, and have provided important insights into the pathogenesis and treatment of Pneumocystis pneumonia, as well as host immune responses to this infection. The growth in lungs appears obligate, as the fungus can not currently be grown in culture. Other species of Pneumocystis infect different hosts, such as P. carinii, which infects rats. Pneumocystis species are found in the Taphrinomycotina subdivision of Ascomycota, along with Schizosaccharomyces pombe.

The genome sequencing and analysis of Pneumocystis murina, P. carinii, and P. jirovecii is a collaborative project between the Broad Institute and:

• Critical Care Medicine Department, NIH Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health (Funded by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH Clinical Center).
• Laboratory of Immunopathogenesis and Bioinformatics (LIB), SAIC-Frederick, Inc. (under contract by the National Institute of Allergy and Infection Disease, Nation Institutes of Health).

Data access and Citation

All data for this project is available in Genbank under the Umbrella project accession PRJNA223519. This includes the genomes of P. jirovecii, which infects humans, P. murina, which infects mice, and P. carinii, which infects rats, and RNA-Seq of P. murina and P. carinii.

Data files formerly available on this website can be accessed on our fungal ftp site.

For use of this data, please cite: Ma L et al., "Genome analysis of three Pneumocystis species reveals adaptation mechanisms to life exclusively in mammalian hosts.", Nature Communications 2016 Feb 22;7:10740. doi: 10.1038/ncomms10740.