With Love From CSF

April 17, 20100 comments

Love, the basis of life is not only for humans, also for deadly pathogens like Cryptococcus. Scientists have revealed its sweet love story with a sugar named inositol which is present abundantly in human brain and CSF which they think, may be the reason for its dominance in CSF when infected.

To utilize inositol from human brain, fungi usually has an expanded set of genes in its DNA that encode for the sugar transport molecules. Scientists found that Cryptococcus has a dozen set of those genes which makes the yeast efficient to thrive on inositol. Cryptococcus found to have more numbers of inositol transporters than any other fungi. Moreover inositol stimulates the fungi to sexually reproduce. It reveals a connection between Cryptococcus infection and high concentration of inositol in brain. This study has given clues to clinicians and researchers to work on new strategies to cure Cryptococcosis and put an end to this love story,which, if not, will take us away from our loved ones.

April 17, 20100 comments

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