The second International Symposium on Fungal Stress: ISFUS

Abstract

The topic of 'fungal stress' is central to many important disciplines, including medical mycology, chronobiology, plant and insect pathology, industrial microbiology, material sciences, and astrobiology. The International Symposium on Fungal Stress (ISFUS) brought together researchers, who study fungal stress in a variety of fields. The second ISFUS was held in May 8-11 2017 in Goiania, Goiás, Brazil and hosted by the Instituto de Patologia Tropical e Saúde Pública at the Universidade Federal de Goiás. It was supported by grants from CAPES and FAPEG. Twenty-seven speakers from 15 countries presented their research related to fungal stress biology. The Symposium was divided into seven topics: 1. Fungal biology in extreme environments; 2. Stress mechanisms and responses in fungi: molecular biology, biochemistry, biophysics, and cellular biology; 3. Fungal photobiology in the context of stress; 4. Role of stress in fungal pathogenesis; 5. Fungal stress and bioremediation; 6. Fungal stress in agriculture and forestry; and 7. Fungal stress in industrial applications. This article provides an overview of the science presented and discussed at ISFUS-2017.

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“…Glycerol, a small and polar molecule with behaviour that is not dissimilar to that of water, appeared to play essential biophysical and ecophysiological functions in many microbial systems under extremely hostile conditions, so we developed an intense interest in this polyol. This, in turn, gave rise to a thematic issue of Environmental Microbiology (‘Environmental Glycerol Metabolism’; Hallsworth, ) and a presentation at the International Symposium on Fungal Stress (in Brazil, 2017; see Alder‐Rangel et al ., ) ‘A Story about Glycerol’. The latter focused on the main characteristics of glycerol as both cellular stress‐protectant and cellular stressor; this polyol: accumulates in conidia produced at low water‐activity, enhances germination of conidia on solid media at low water‐activity and facilitates host infection at low relative humidity by entomopathogenic fungi (see above), is chaotropic at high concentrations (Williams and Hallsworth, ; Cray et al ., ), reduces water activity more effectively than other kinds of organic compatible solute (de Lima Alves et al ., ), can act hydraulically to facilitate infection of the plant host by fungal plant pathogens (Foster et al ., ), can (paradoxically) mitigate against stresses induced by chaotropes and chaotropicity‐mediated hydrophobe‐induced stress (Hallsworth et al ., ; Bhaganna et al ., ; ), is the most permissive solute‐stressor for growth of xerophiles at low water‐activity (Williams and Hallsworth, ), inhibits growth and metabolism via the reduction of water activity and, at high concentrations, via chaotropicity (but is not an osmotic stressor) (de Lima Alves et al ., ) and can enhance cold tolerance and reduce the low‐temperature minima for growth by facilitating flexibility of cellular macromolecules (Chin et al ., ; C. L. Magill and J. E. Hallsworth, unpubl.…”