Mucorales and Mucormycosis 2022
A special issue of Journal of Fungi (ISSN 2309-608X).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2023) | Viewed by 17543
Special Issue Editor
Interests: RNA silencing mechanism in fungus; Mucorales; antifungal resistance and virulence; fungal genetics and genomics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The Special Issue “Mucorales and Mucormycosis” deals with the current status and timeliness of the research in the exciting field of the Mucorales fungi. Mucorales have two essential features making them a thrilling subject of study. The first is the lethal fungal infection known as mucormycosis, caused by many Mucorales species. Mucormycosis is fatal mainly because there are no effective antifungal drugs against Mucorales. Moreover, mucormycosis is an emerging disease, a characteristic that is acquiring its greatest exponential growth due to the current pandemic of COVID-19. Thus, epidemics of mucormycosis have been declared in several Asian countries. The other important feature of Mucorales is their capacity to overproduce lipids (in fact, they are usually known as oleaginous fungi), among many other compounds, which makes them industrially attractive.
Despite these interesting features, Mucorales have been traditionally considered a neglected group of ancient fungi underrepresented in the goals of the scientific fungal community. The main reason constantly exhibited to excuse this underrepresentation is the stubborn reluctance of Mucorales to accept genetic manipulation. However, we believe that the field is seeing the beginning of a paradigm shift related to the whole order of Mucorales. The main reason is that we already have study models among Mucorales that allow most modern genetic tools. These tools include homologous recombination, gene disruption, complementation, amino-acid substitutions, and tag-labeling for protein purification and fluorescent cellular localization. Even more exciting, stable homologous recombination has recently been reported in a causal agent of mucormycosis, becoming the first pathogenic Mucoral to be genetically dissected for functional studies.
This Special Issue of Journal of Fungi will try to answer basic and more applied questions about Mucorales, focusing on the lethal disease mucormycosis but not limiting other studies on the physiology of these ancient fungi.
Sincerely,
Dr. Francisco E. Nicolás
Guest Editor
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