Intracellular mechanisms of fungal space searching in microenvironments
Abstract
Many filamentous fungi colonizing animal or plant tissue, waste matter, or soil must find optimal paths through the constraining geometries of their microenvironment. Imaging of live fungal growth in custom-built microfluidics structures revealed the intracellular mechanisms responsible for this remarkable efficiency. In meandering channels, the Spitzenkörper (an assembly of vesicles at the filament tip) acted like a natural gyroscope, conserving the directional memory of growth, while the fungal cytoskeleton organized along the shortest growth path. However, if an obstacle could not be negotiated, the directional memory was lost due to the disappearance of the Spitzenkörper gyroscope. This study can impact diverse environmental, industrial, and medical applications, from fungal pathogenicity in plants and animals to biology-inspired computation.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jun 18, 2019
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.1816423116
Entities
People
- Clive Edwards
- Dan V Nicolau
- Marie Held
- Ondřej Kašpar
Organizations
- Leverhulme Trust
- McGill University
- University of Chemistry and Technology
- University of Liverpool