BACKGROUND In recent years, the fungal infectious disease zygomycosis has increased in incidence worldwide, especially among the immunodeficient population. Despite the rates of zygomycosis-related death and deformation being very high, the mechanism(s) by which the fungal pathogens cause these severe manifestations remain unknown. METHODS Using the associated Rhizomucor variabilis species, w...

Rhizomucor tauricus, an industrial fungus, was immobilized in sodium alginate and used as adsorbent for the removal of nickel from aqueous solutions. The biosorption capacity of Ni(II) was found to be 394 mg/g of immobilized biomass. It was observed that an increase in pH from 3 to 6 increased the percent adsorption, and an increase in liquid-to-solid ratio from 2 to 10 increased the metal upta...

Contamination of medicinal plant mass with mycobiots is one of the negative factors deteriorating the quality of raw material. In order to evaluate the impact of the yield processing technologies upon the changes of mycobiots in raw material, the mycobiotic conditions of herb hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis L.) raw material were evaluated under various regimes of active ventilation and optimizatio...

Enantioselectivity of enzyme catalysis is often rationalized via active site models. These models are constructed on the basis of comparing the enantiomeric excess of product observed in a series of reactions which are conducted with a range of homologous substrates, typically carrying various side chain substitutions. Surprisingly the practical application of these simple but informative 'pock...

Worker insects altruistically sacrifice their own reproduction to rear nondescendant kin. This sacrifice reaches its most spectacular level in suicidal colony defense. Suicidal defense, such as when the sting of a honeybee worker embeds in a predator and then breaks off, is normally a facultative response. Here we describe the first example of preemptive self-sacrifice in nest defense. In the B...

background and purpose: soil is the main habitat of saprophytic and pathogenic fungi. mucormycetes are one of the most parts of soil fungi and certain members are among opportunistic fungi and can cause systemic fungal infections in immunocompromised patients. the majority of human and animal infections are caused by members of the genera rhizopus, mucor, rhizomucor, lichtheimia (absidia), cunn...

Rhizomucor variabilis and Hormographiella aspergillata rarely cause human infections. This report details a fatal case of a 14-year-old female with leukemia posthematopoietic cell transplant and relapse with refractory pancytopenia. The patient first developed an R. variabilis var. regularior palate infection and later developed a cutaneous H. aspergillata infection while on posaconazole and ca...