Trichosporon asteroides

Colonies on Sabouraud dextrose agar at 25°C are white, undulate, dull, and radially furrowed. Colony size is 10 mm after 10 days incubation.

On cornmeal following 72 hours incubation at 25°C, it produces primarily true hyphae that disarticulate into rectangular arthroconidia measuring approximately 3-4 x 4-8 µm. Yeast cells are seen sparingly. Appressoria are absent [1270], [928].

This isolate is urease positive and grows on media containing cycloheximide. The type strain was isolated from human skin. This species is most frequent associated with superficial mycoses [925], although it has been noted as an etiological agent in a nosocomial fungemia [1272]. Trichosporon asteroides may be distinguished from T. asahii by its primarily filamentous morphology and from T. inkin by it inability to form appressoria. Medically relevant Trichosporon species may also be identified based on sequences of the internal transcribed spacer regions [2189].

PubMed

GenBank

References

925. Gueho, E., L. Improvisi, G. S. de Hoog, and B. Dupont. 1994. Trichosporon on humans: a practical account. Mycoses. 37:3-10.

928. Gueho, E., M. T. Smith, G. S. de Hoog, G. Billon-Grand, R. Christen, and W. H. Batenburg-van der Vegte. 1992. Contributions to a revision of the genus Trichosporon. Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek. 61:289-316.

1270. Kurtzman, C. P., and J. W. Fell (ed.). 2000. The Yeasts. A Taxonomic Study. Elsevier Scientific B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

1272. Kustimur, S., A. Kalkanci, K. Caglar, M. Dizbay, F. Aktas, and T. Sugita. 2002. Nosocomial fungemia due to Trichosporon asteroides: firstly described bloodstream infection. Diagn Microbiol Infect Dis. 43:167-170.

2189. Sugita, T., A. Nishikawa, and T. Shinoda. 1998. Identification of Trichosporon asahii by PCR based on sequences of the internal transcribed spacer regions. J Clin Microbiol. 36:2742-2744.