Determinants of virulence in the pathogenic fungi

Determinants of virulence in the pathogenic fungi.

Lipolytic Enzymes Involved in the Virulence of Human Pathogenic Fungi

Pathogenic microbes secrete various enzymes with lipolytic activities to facilitate their survival within the host. Lipolytic enzymes include extracellular lipases and phospholipases, and several lines of evidence have suggested that these enzymes contribute to the virulence of pathogenic fungi. Candida albicans and Cryptococcus neoformans are the most commonly isolated human fungal pathogens, ...

Ras-Mediated Signal Transduction and Virulence in Human Pathogenic Fungi.

Signal transduction pathways regulating growth and stress responses are areas of significant study in the effort to delineate pathogenic mechanisms of fungi. In-depth knowledge of signal transduction events deepens our understanding of how a fungal pathogen is able to sense changes in the environment and respond accordingly by modulation of gene expression and re-organization of cellular activi...

Amoeba provide insight into the origin of virulence in pathogenic fungi.

Why are some fungi pathogenic while the majority poses no threat to humans or other hosts? Of the more than 1.5 million fungal species only about 150-300 are pathogenic for humans, and of these, only 10-15 are relatively common pathogens. In contrast, fungi are major pathogens for plants and insects. These facts pose several fundamental questions including the mechanisms responsible for the ori...

Molecular genetic approaches for the study of virulence in both pathogenic bacteria and fungi.

An understanding of the mechanisms of bacterial and fungal pathogenesis is dependent on the identification and characterization of the microbial gene products that influence the progression of infection. The complexity of host-pathogen interactions, particularly in the context of changing cellular and tissue environments encountered by invading pathogens, has made this task very difficult to ap...