Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Research Highlight
  • Published:

Fungal pathogenesis

Glued for protection

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 5, page 243 (2007)Cite this article

A. fumigatus causes often-lethal opportunistic invasive lung infections in immunocompromised individuals and allergies in asthma and cystic fibrosis sufferers. In the laboratory, aspergilli are usually grown in shake flasks or fermentors — a convenient way to harvest biomass for experiments. But in the lungs inhaled spores (conidia) germinate, producing aerial hyphae that clump to form fungal balls.

Beauvais et al. realized that the growth of fungal balls is most closely mimicked in the laboratory by growing aspergilli on solid agar media. By comparing features of mycelia grown on solid media and in liquid culture they hoped to gain insights into the pathogenesis of A. fumigatus. Perhaps surprisingly, biomass accumulated more quickly and to higher dry weights when A. fumigatus was grown on solid media. All the cultures were equally sensitive to imidazoles and caspofungins, but polyene drugs, especially nystatin, killed far fewer cells in cultures that were grown on solid media compared with liquid-grown cells.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Beauvais, A. et al. An extracellular matrix glues together the aerial-grown hyphae of Aspergillus fumigatus. Cell Microbiol. 16 Feb 2007 (doi:10.1111/j.1462-5822.2007.00895.x)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Susan Jones
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Jones, S. Glued for protection. Nat Rev Microbiol 5, 243 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro1649

Download citation

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro1649

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing