Metagenomic identification of a novel oomycete cultured from a pyogranulomatous mass on the tail of a domestic cat

Abstract

We report here a transiently culturable oomycete pathogen isolated from a pyogranulomatous tail mass in a cat. The organism was morphologically and genetically distinct from Lagenidium and Pythium species. Following next-generation sequencing (NGS) and assembly of contigs, initial phylogenetic analysis using fragments of the cox1 mitochondrial gene identified this specimen as Paralagenidium sp. after nucleotide alignments with sequences obtained from the Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD). However, further analysis of a concatenation of 13 different mitochondrial genes showed that this organism is unique and different from all known oomycetes. A negative PCR result using primers targeting known oomycete pathogens may not be enough to rule out oomycosis in a suspected case. Additionally, the use of a single gene to classify oomycetes may produce misleading results. The advent of metagenomic sequencing and NGS provides a unique opportunity to further explore the diversity of oomycetes as plant and animal pathogens beyond the current capabilities of global barcoding projects that are based on partial genomic sequences.