vecturist

It's tentatively titled 'When good fungi go bad.' I'm looking at several fungi which are part of the environment and usually function as decomposers but are starting to emerge as opportunistic pathogens - infecting people who are immuno-compromised. Most of my experiments center around expression levels of certain genes which help build cell walls and if expression changes at higher temps - the temperature of the human body is a huge deterrent for potential infecting organisms. I''m also trying to see if there are major genetic differences between classes of fungal pathogens - some only infect plants, some only infect humans, and some can infect both.

Fungal infections are interesting (and a little gross). Most are cutaneous - involving the skin (like ringworm). However, if they are respiratory, they're extremely difficult to treat - they aren't many drugs available and they're of limited efficacy. For what it's worth as whump goes, a friend's sister had aspergillosis and the only way they could treat her was to put her in on a ventilator in a medically induced coma for her lungs to heal. Luckily she pulled through.