Fungalpedia – Note 3304, Schizosaccharomycetes

 

Schizosaccharomycetes O.E. Erikss. & Winka, Myconet 1(1): 10 (1997).

Citation when using this data: Wijayawardene NN et al. 2024 – Fungalpedia.

Index Fungorum, Faceoffungi, MycoBank, GenBank, Fig 1.

Classification: Taphrinomycotina, Ascomycota, Dikarya, Fungi.

Notes: Eriksson et al. (1993) introduced the order Schizosaccharomycetales O.E. Erikss. et al. to accommodate the family Schizosaccharomycetaceae Beij. ex Klöcker. Eriksson and Winka (1997) introduced the class Schizosaccharomycetes. The phylogenetic placement was subject to a long-lasting discourse. Although it was early concluded that the fission yeasts diverged early from a common ancestor of the eukaryotes it could not be answered unambiguously if they are archaic ascomycetes which diverged early from the Ascomycota or if they diverged later after the Ascomycota from the lineage that leads to the Metazoa (Sipiczki 1989; Sipiczki 1995). Only after whole genome data were available open questions concerning  the phylogeny of the fission yeast could be answered with higher confidence. Liu et al. (2009) confirmed the placement of Schizosaccharomyces (the representative genus of Schizosaccharomycetes) in the subphylum Taphrinomycotina. Currently, the class comprises one order, one family which only contains the genus Schizosaccharomyces. It was proposed to divide the genus Schizosaccharomyces in three genera: Schizosaccharomyces, Octosporomyces (Kudrjawzew 1960) and Hasegawaea (Yamada and Banno 1987). This proposal was never broadly accepted by later authors. The genus Schizosaccharomyces currently comprises seven species (i.e. S. japonicus, S. versatilis, S. cryophilus, S. pombe, S. octosporus, S. lindneri and S. osmophilus).

Type order: Schizosaccharomycetales O.E. Erikss., Syst. Ascom. 11: 146 (1994).

Type family: Schizosaccharomycetaceae Beij. ex Klöcker, Lafar’s Handb. Techn. Mykol., Edn 2 4: 189 (1905).

Type genus: Schizosaccharomyces Lindner, Wochenschr. Brau. 10: 1298 (1893).

Type species: Schizosaccharomyces pombe Lindner, Wochenschr. Brau. 10: 1298 (1893).

Other accepted species: Species Fungorum – search Schizosaccharomycetes.

 

Figure 1 – Microphotographs of different Schizosaccharomyces species. a Ascus of S. pombe with 4 ascospores (nuclei stained with dapi). b Ascus of S. lindneri with 8 ascospores. c Dividing cell of S. pombe. d Dividing cell of S. lindneri. Cell division instead of budding is one of the characteristic features that differentiates the Schizosaccharomycetes from the Saccharomycetes.

 

References

Eriksson O, Hawksworth DL. 1993 – Outline of the Ascomycetes— 1993. Syst Ascomycetum 12:1–257.

Eriksson OE, Winka W. 1997 – Supraordinal taxa of Ascomycota. Myconet. 1:1–16.

Liu Y, Leigh JW, Brinkmann H, Cushion MT et al. 2009 – Phylogenomic analyses support the monophyly of Taphrinomycotina, including Schizosaccharomyces fission yeasts. Mol Biol Evol 26:27-34.

Yamada Y, Banno I. 1987 – Hasegawaea gen. nov., an ascosporogenous yeast genus for the organisms whose asexual reproduction is by fission and whose ascospores have smooth surfaces without papillae and which are characterized by the absence of coenzyme Q and by the presence of linoleic acid in cellular fatty acid composition. J Gen App Microbiol 33(3):295–298

 

Entry by

Nalin N. Wijayawardene, Center for Yunnan Plateau Biological Resources Protection and Utilization, College of Biological Resource and Food Engineering, Qujing Normal University, Qujing, Yunnan 655011, P.R. China, Tropical Microbiology Research Foundation, 96/N/10, Meemanagoda Road, 10230 Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka, Department of Bioprocess Technology, Faculty of Technology, Rajarata University, Sri Lanka

 

Published online 29 September 2026

Back to Glossary Index Page