Scedosporium aurantiacum is a fungal pathogen of humans and other animals that is highly prevalent in urban Sydney. The variability of virulence between isolates is putatively a result of genetic differences between them. In an effort to establish the genetic factors underpinning virulence we have generated whole genome sequence for 2 high and 2 low virulence S. aurantiacum strains.

We performed de novo assembly and whole genome multiple alignments that included a well annotated relative. Utilising PyCogent and a new tool we have developed, we predict one-to-one orthologs via alignment based projection from the annotated relative.

Our analyses reveal that the high and low virulence strains are more closely related within a group than between groups. It is possible this relationship reflects a single gain/loss of virulence since the common ancestor of the different phenotypes. However, it is also possible that the greater genetic similarity within phenotype is just a consequence of our small sample size. In other words, the within phenotype genetic similarities may not causally relate to virulence and the evolution of virulence may not be unique.