Exophiala species are black, yeast-like molds that can cause subcutaneous cysts as well as disseminated disease. Isolated pneumonia due to Exophiala species is extremely uncommon. We report a case of isolated Exophiala pneumonia in a patient with bronchiectasis who presented with worsening dyspnea and a cough productive of black sputum. The production of black sputum, known as melanoptysis, is ...

BACKGROUND Recently, identification of fungi have been supplemented by molecular tools, such as ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequence analysis. According to these tools, morphological Exophiala species was newly introduced or redefined. OBJECTIVE This study was designed to investigate the phylogenetics based on ribosomal ITS sequence analysis from clinical Exophiala species iso...

Infections of Exophiala spp. and Fusarium spp. are often chronic and recalcitrant. Systemic disseminations, which mostly occur in immunocompromised patients, are often refractory to available antifungal therapies. The conserved target of rapamycin (TOR) orchestrates cell growth and proliferation in response to nutrients and growth factors, which are important for pathogenicity and virulence. IN...

A novel black yeast-like fungus, Exophiala crusticola, is described based on two closely related isolates from biological soil crust (BSC) samples collected on the Colorado Plateau (Utah) and in the Great Basin desert (Oregon), USA. Their morphology places them in the anamorphic genus Exophiala, having affinities to the family Herpotrichiellaceae (Ascomycota). Phylogenetic analysis of their D1/...

OBJECTIVES We have evaluated the efficacy of posaconazole, itraconazole and amphotericin B in murine models of disseminated infection caused by Exophiala spp. METHODS Immunosuppressed mice were treated with posaconazole at 10, 20 or 40 mg/kg/day orally (po), amphotericin B at 1.5 mg/kg/day intraperitoneally (ip) or itraconazole at 50 mg/kg/day po. Treatment began 1 day after infection and con...

Exophiala species are rarely implicated in clinical diseases. In the past 2 years, we have treated phaeohyphomycosis caused by Exophiala species in three immunocompromised patients. Two of these patients presented with subcutaneous abscess or cutaneous verrucous lesions due to Exophiala jeanselmei. The former, an 81-year-old woman, had pulmonary tuberculosis and the latter, a 62-year-old man, h...

The fungal genus Exophiala comprises both pathogen species, which cause severe infections in humans, and environmental species, which are able to degrade alkylbenzene compounds. The draft genome sequence of Exophiala mesophila presented here is the first genome assembly of an alkylbenzene-degrading organism belonging to the genus Exophiala.

Previous work describing the embryonic stages of turtle development has not included members of the highly derived trionychid turtles. Staging criteria are described for the spiny softshell turtle (Apalone spinifera) to facilitate comparisons between phylogenetically distant taxa of turtles. Embryonic development in A. spinifera is placed in the context of the widely used sequence of Yntema sta...

Members of the genus Exophiala are often difficult to identify to the species level because of their variable morphological appearances. This paper describes the methods used to identify Exophiala mesophila and provides salient differential features for distinguishing other mesophilic members of the genus.