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Full-Text Articles in Microbiology
Evolutionary And Molecular Analysis Of Conserved Vertebrate Immunity To Fungi, Erin Carter
Evolutionary And Molecular Analysis Of Conserved Vertebrate Immunity To Fungi, Erin Carter
Honors College
The innate immune system is highly conserved amongst all multicellular organisms. Yet a constant battle exists between host cells and pathogens due to the rapid evolution of immune system components. Functional genomics and in silico methods can be employed to elucidate the evolutionary patterns of vertebrate immunity to pathogenic fungi such as Candida albicans, an opportunistic fungal pathogen that can cause lethal candidiasis in the immunocompromised. Mammals such as humans and mice possess conserved C-type lectin receptors that recognize the C. albicans cell wall. However, these receptors have not been identified in fish. Here I describe how we identified potential …
Unmasking Candidiasis: A Mechanistic Model For Innate Immune-Fungal Cell Wall Dynamics, Erica Hidu
Unmasking Candidiasis: A Mechanistic Model For Innate Immune-Fungal Cell Wall Dynamics, Erica Hidu
Honors College
Candida albicans is an opportunistic fungal pathogen that can cause a potentially lethal systemic infection in immunocompromised patients. Increasing drug resistance of Candida species to anti-fungal treatments makes the study of this pathogen ever more important. Study of the C. albicans cell wall provides insight into its importance in pathogenesis, immune recognition, and anti-fungal action. It has been shown that β- glucan, a masked component of the fungal cell wall and ligand for the immune receptor Dectin-1, becomes available for immune recognition in the mouse model of systemic candidiasis. To develop a mechanistic model to explain this unmasking, we investigated …