Cancer patients, especially stem cell transplantation recipients and patients with leukemia, constitute a high-risk group for the development of life-threatening systemic fungal infections. Candidiasis represents the most commonly reported fungal infection in cancer patients. Candidemia alone is associated with a mortality rate above 50% in this patient population. Even more challenging than th...

Cryptococcus gattii is an emerging intracellular pathogen and the cause of the largest primary outbreak of a life-threatening fungal disease in a healthy population. Outbreak strains share a unique mitochondrial gene expression profile and an increased ability to tubularize their mitochondria within host macrophages. However, the underlying mechanism that causes this lineage of C. gattii to be ...

AIM To determine whether iron metabolism influences the incidence of systemic fungal infection in patients with haematological malignancies. METHODS The study population comprised 74 patients who had undergone myeloablative chemotherapy. Systemic fungal infections were classified as confirmed (histological confirmation or characteristic septate hyphae) or possible (antibiotic resistant fever ...

Higher plants are ubiquitously colonized with fungal endophytes that often lack readily detectable structures. This study examines the diverse endophyte population within a single line of micropropagated Bouteloua eriopoda (Torr.) Torr., using microscopy and comparison of internal spacer (ITS) gene sequences obtained from both plant and isolated fungal tissues. Microscopy revealed fungal hyphae...

Skin as the largest organ of human body is significantly colonized by a variety of bacterial and fungal population [1,2]. Today the percent of opportunistic fungal infections is increasing, so when considering the role of skin as a reservoir from which infection of a susceptible host can occur, determining the fungal microbiome specially Candida is important [3]. Two of the most factors influen...

Biotrophic fungal pathogens are expected to have adapted to their host plants for phenological synchrony, to optimize the possibility of contacts leading to infections. We investigated the patterns and causes of variation in phenological synchrony in the oak-powdery mildew pathosystem, a major disease in natural ecosystems. The study was carried out along an altitudinal gradient, representing a...

Strain typing of medically important fungi and fungal population genetics have been stimulated by new methods of tapping DNA variation. The aim of this contribution is to show how awareness of fungal population genetics can increase the utility of strain typing to better serve the interests of medical mycology. Knowing two basic features of fungal population biology, the mode of reproduction an...

Forest ecosystem harbour a large number of biotic components where cellulolytic microorganisms participate actively in the biotransformation of dead and decaying organic matter and soil nutrient cycling. This study explores the aerobic culturable cellulolytic microorganisms in the forest soils of North East India. Soil samples rich in dead and decaying organic matter were collected from eight c...

The composition and changes of the fungal population and of the metabolites present in grapes and in ferments of Vitis vinifera L. cv. Corvina, one of the major components of the Amarone musts, were dissected aiming at the identification of constant characteristics possibly influenced by the productive process. The fungal populations and metabolomic profiles were analyzed in three different vin...