A taxogenomic view of the genus Torulaspora: an expansion from ten to twenty-two species

Abstract

The yeast genus Torulaspora (subphylum Saccharomycotina, family Saccharomycetaceae) is mostly known from its type species, T. delbrueckii, a frequent colonizer of wine and sourdough bread fermentations. The genus currently contains 10 species that are typically found in various natural terrestrial environments in temperate and tropical climates. Here we employ taxogenomic analyses to investigate a large collection of Torulaspora strains obtained in multiple surveys we carried out in Asia, Australasia, North America, South America, and Europe, and to which we added several strains maintained in culture collections.

Our analyses detected twelve novel species that are formally described here, thereby more than doubling the species diversity of Torulaspora. We also sketch a genotype-phenotype map for the genus and show how the complex relationship between key genes and the physiological traits they control both between and within species. This remarkable increase in the number of species in the genus Torulaspora highlights how limited the current inventory of fungal taxa is.

It also shows how integrated taxogenomic approaches can foster the assessment of species circumscriptions in fungi.

Citation

Silva MR, Paraíso F, Al-Oboudi J, Abegg M, Aires A, Barros KO, Brito PH, Jarzyna M, Sylvester K, Langdon QK, Opulente DA, Carriconde F, Fell JW, Hofmann TA, Lachance M-A, Legras J-L, Libkind D, Pontes A, Gonçalves P, Rosa CA, Groenewald M, Hittinger CT, Sampaio JP (2025). A taxogenomic view of the genus Torulaspora: an expansion from ten to twenty-two species. Persoonia 54: 265–283. doi: 10.3114/persoonia.2025.54.08 Received: 27 September 2024; Accepted: 2 May 2025; Effectively published online: 23 May 2025 Corresponding editor: J. Houbraken