FungalRV: adhesin prediction and immunoinformatics portal for human fungal pathogens

FaaPred: A SVM-Based Prediction Method for Fungal Adhesins and Adhesin-Like Proteins

Adhesion constitutes one of the initial stages of infection in microbial diseases and is mediated by adhesins. Hence, identification and comprehensive knowledge of adhesins and adhesin-like proteins is essential to understand adhesin mediated pathogenesis and how to exploit its therapeutic potential. However, the knowledge about fungal adhesins is rudimentary compared to that of bacterial adhes...

Molecular Identification of Human Fungal Pathogens

Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Fungal Pathogens.

Owing to their small size and paucity of phenotypic characters, progress in the evolutionary biology of microbes in general, and human pathogenic fungi in particular, has been linked to a series of advances in DNA sequencing over the past quarter century. Phylogenetics was the first area to benefit, with the achievement of a basic understanding of fungal phylogeny. Population genetics was the n...

Human and Plant Fungal Pathogens: The Role of Secondary Metabolites

Secondary metabolites (SM) are small organic molecules produced by various microorganisms (mainly fungi and actinobacteria, among others) through the action of large enzymes like nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS) and polyketide synthases (PKS) or by enzymes like dimethylallyl transferases and prenyltransferases. These special metabolites are in general not essential for growth but are bel...

Purine Acquisition and Synthesis by Human Fungal Pathogens

While members of the Kingdom Fungi are found across many of the world's most hostile environments, only a limited number of species can thrive within the human host. The causative agents of the most common invasive fungal infections are Candida albicans, Aspergillus fumigatus, and Cryptococcus neoformans. During the infection process, these fungi must not only combat the host immune system whil...