Samples collected from fungal cultures, skin of dogs and ZymoBIOMICSTM mock community (which includes Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Cryptococcus neoformans). The amplicons length of the fungal cultures and ZymoBIOMICSTM mock community is 3,5 Kb and 6 Kb, while the Malassezia spp samples used as control is 3,5 Kb. The amplicons length of the four samples from the skin is 3,5 Kb.. Rapid and real-time identification of fungi up to species level with long amplicon Nanopore sequencing

The availability of long-read technologies, like Oxford Nanopore Technologies, provides the opportunity to sequence longer fragments of the fungal ribosomal operon, up to 6 Kb (18S-ITS1-5.8S-ITS2-28S), and to improve the taxonomy assignment of the communities up to species level and in real-time. We assess the taxonomy skills of amplicons targeting a 3.5 Kb region (V3 18S-ITS1-5.8S-ITS2-28S D2) and a 6 Kb region (V1 18S-ITS1-5.8S-ITS2-28S D12) with the What's in my pot (WIMP) classifier. We used the ZymoBIOMICSTM mock community and different microbiological fungal cultures as positive controls. Long amplicon sequencing correctly identified Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Cryptococcus neoformans from the mock community and Malassezia pachydermatis, Microsporum canis, Aspergillus fumigatus from microbiological cultures. Besides, we identified Rhodotorula graminis in a culture mislabeled as Candida spp.We applied the same approach to external otitis in dogs. Malassezia was the dominant fungal genus in dogs' ear skin, whereas M. pachydermatis was the main species in the healthy sample. Conversely, we identified a higher representation of M. globosa and M. sympodialis in otitis affected samples. We demonstrate the suitability of long ribosomal amplicons to characterize the fungal community of complex samples, either healthy or with clinical signs of infection.