About the project Fungi can cause devastating diseases in plants and animals. This is illustrated by the fact that 1.5 million people die each year of a fungal infection, which is higher than caused by malaria or HIV. Infection of humans by the two main human fungal pathogens,
Candida albicans and
Aspergillus fumigatus, is mediated by their ability to grow by means of elongated cells called hyphae. The tips of these filamentous cells are capable of invading host tissues thereby spreading the infection. Previous studies identified cytoskeleton and vesicle trafficking as important cellular processes to establish and maintain hyphal growth. Interestingly, our teams recently found that also the subcellular localization of RNA molecules within hyphal cells could play a role in their physiology. While the function of sub-cellular localization of mRNAs could not be studied so far due to technological limitations, new tools have recently become available in our labs. Therefore, we are now able for the first time, to study which mRNAs localize at the hyphal tips, how these mRNAs are transported, and whether and how this impacts pathogenicity of
C. albicans and
A. fumigatus. As a result, we expect to identify novel molecular pathways that are involved in hyphal growth and pathogenicity and that are potential targets for anti-fungal drug therapy. Furthermore, this work has the potential to establish methods and pipelines to investigate other emerging fungal pathogens.
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