IDENTIFICATION OF PATHOGENIC FUNGI IN METAGENOMIC DATA FROM CERRADO

The Cerrado is the second largest biome in South America, occupying about 22% of the Brazilian territory when compared to other biomes, considered the largest food producer in Brazil, presenting great biodiversity and potential for the discovery of new organisms and new products. In this context, metagenomics is the ideal tool to identify these microorganisms, with the extraction of DNA from all organisms present in that environment, it is possible, with the help of the software, to identify and characterize them. This study used previous metagenomic data to identify human pathogenic fungi in soils of the Brazilian Cerrado region, so the objective of this work was to report the composition of the fungi community present in the soil, and to report the pathogenic species. The methodology used was for the mining of the total DNA dataset of fungal sequences available in the public MG-RAST (mgp10523, mgp10541 and mgp10450) database the samples were separated into three groups: undisturbed soils (NATIVE1, NATIVE2 and NATIVE3), no-tillage systems (NT1, NT2 and NT3) and conventional tillage systems (CT1, CT2 and CT3). The fungi were classified as pathogenic according to the case reports or other pathogenicity analyzes described in the literature. With about 25.1% of the sequences, pathogenic fungi prevailed in samples of undisturbed soils (NATIVE:16.719; NT:12.992; CT:11.547). Nonetheless, a total of 40 different species were identified causing human diseases, being the most abundant fungi the Aspergillus fumigatus (26.7%), Nectria haematococca (14.1%) and Cryptococcus neoformans (var. neoformans) (10.3%). Important human fungal pathogens as Pneumocystis carinii, Coccidioides immitis, Histoplasma capsulatum, fungi of the genus Trichophyton spp., Paracoccidioides spp., Candida spp. and black yeasts were identified. Human fungal pathogens associated with less-severe disease states were also identified, including members of the Malassezia sp. and others. The identification of pathogenic fungi present in this biome is fundamental for the description of the routes of infection of fungal diseases, being able to know more about the species and also to establish in these environments the niche, so that one can devise ways to prevent the contamination of the population which works with agriculture and extractivism or the residents of this region.