Cover of May 22 edition of ScienceNews

You know it is a good day at the library when you walk by the magazine rack and see a false-color electron micrograph image of a conidiophore on a cover. It was the cover of the May 22, edition of ScienceNews, which happened to contain a feature article entitled I, Mold by Laura Bell. It is available on line from the magazine website:

In the germ world, fungi usually lack the flair of viruses or bacteria. To people with normal, healthy immune systems, a fungus will rarely show itself — even though you carry around a microscopic film of fungus on your hair and skin, and take in invisible clouds of fungal spores with each breath. While many other microbes prefer to make a living through disease and death, a fungus is often content to wait for its host to die of something else.

As can be garnered from the first paragraph, the article has a medical mycology focus, with reference to Cryptococcus, Aspergillus and Candida. Bell does a nice job of weaving together recent research and comments from fungal researchers to provide a timely update on the state of progress in fighting fungal diseases.

The article (and the MIT press release) says that Candida is related to bakers yeast. Well… close enough I guess.

Original MIT press release

Full text of publication in Nature