Candida glabrata is an opportunistic yeast pathogen, whose incidence has increased over the last decades. Despite its genus name, this species is actually more closely related to the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae than to other Candida pathogens, such as Candida albicans. Hence, C. glabrata and C. albicans must have acquired the ability to infect humans independently, which is reflected in the use of different mechanism for virulence, and survival in the host. Yet, research on C. glabrata suffers from assumptions carried over from the more studied C. albicans. Regarding the adaptation of C. glabrata to the human host, the prejudice was that, just as C. albicans, C. glabrata is a natural human commensal that turns deadly when immune defenses weaken. It was also considered asexual, as no one has observed mating, diploids, or spores, despite great efforts. However, the recent analysis of whole genomes from globally distributed C. glabrata isolates have shaken these assumptions. C. glabrata seems to be only secondarily associated to humans, as indicated by a lack of co-evolution with its host, and genomic footprints of recombination shows compelling evidence that this yeast is able to have sex. Here, we discuss the implications of this and other recent findings and highlight the new questions opened by this change in paradigm.

TG group acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness (MEIC) for the EMBL partnership, and Grants ‘Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa 2013–2017’ SEV-2012-0208, and BFU2015-67107 cofounded by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF); from the CERCA Programme / Generalitat de Catalunya; from the Catalan Research Agency (AGAUR) SGR857, and Grant from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Grant Agreement ERC-2016-724173 the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement no. H2020-MSCA-ITN-2014-642095. CF acknowledges support from the CNRS through the GDRI iGénolevures.