DESCRIPTIONS OF MEDICAL FUNGI

Descriptions of Medical Fungi 183
Schizophyllum commune Fries
Schizophyllum commune is a common basidiomycete bracket fungus found on rotten
wood, and is an occasional human pathogen, principally associated with sinusitis,
allergic bronchopulmonary mycosis and as a contaminant from respiratory specimens.
However the introduction of DNA sequencing and/or MALDI-TOF MS identification in
the clinical laboratory has seen many more cases of S. commune fungal rhinosinusitis
identified (Michel et al. 2012, Chowdhary et al. 2013a, 2014a,b).
RG-1 organism.
Morphological Description: Colonies on 2% malt extract agar are spreading, woolly,
whitish to pale greyish-brown, soon forming macroscopically visible fruiting bodies.
Some isolates may take up to 12 weeks to form fruiting bodies. Fruit bodies are sessile,
kidney-shaped, lobed with split gills on the lower side. Hyphae are hyaline, wide
and have clamp connections. Basidia bear four basidiospores on erect sterigmata.
Basidiospores hyaline, smooth-walled, elongate with lateral scar at lower end, 6-7 x
2-3 µm.
Note: Many clinical isolates of S. commune are monokaryotic and do not show clamp
connections, therefore any white, rapidly growing, sterile isolate showing good growth
at 37 O C with tolerance to benomyl, susceptibility to cycloheximide, and a pronounced
odour should be suspected of being S. commune (Sigler et al. 1995).
Molecular Identification: Sequencing of the ITS and D1/D2 regions is recommended
(Buzina et al. 2001, Won et al. 2012, Chowdhary et al. 2013b, Michel et al. 2012),
however the number of well identified nucleotide sequences of these fungi in the
GenBank database remains limited.
MALDI-TOF MS: Michel et al. (2012), Chowdhary et al. (2014b), Huguenin et al. (2015)
provide identification procedures, however the number of mass spectral profiles to be
found in MALDI-TOF libraries remains limited.
References: McGinnis (1980), Rippon (1988), Sigler et al. (1995), de Hoog et al.
(2015).
Schizophyllum commune basidiocarps growing on malt extract agar.
Antifungal Susceptibility: S. commune (Chowdhary et al. 2013b); MIC µg/mL.
Antifungal Range MIC 90
Antifungal Range MIC 90
AmB 0.03-2 1 FLU 2-64 64
ITRA 0.03-8 1 VORI 0.06-2 0.5