A hot project on the environmental lifestyle of Aspergillus fumigatus

Post by Fabio Palmieri

🌱🔥🫁 From compost heaps to human lungs

Opportunistic fungal pathogens like Aspergillus fumigatus primarily live in the environment, thriving in very diverse ecosystems such as soils and compost heaps. There, they have to fight against bacteria, fungi, and even amoebae predators.

But here’s the big mystery: how does a fungus adapted to environmental lifestyle also acquire the ability to infect humans—without ever experiencing direct selective pressure from us? 🤔

That’s what I am investigating in the Barber Lab at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena!

I am:

• 🌱 Sampling compost heaps to culture A. fumigatus.
• 🧫 Isolating bacteria and fungi that co-exist with it.
• 🧬 Using metagenomics & metatranscriptomics to uncover ecological. functions that moonlight as virulence strategies for human infection.

By diving into compost’s microbial battlefield, this project aims to shed light on the mechanisms leading to human virulence emergence in environmental opportunistic fungal pathogens. 🌍➡️🧑‍⚕️

Many thanks to Bernhard Hube for the nice pictures!