Alexander Idnurm

TL;DR: Evaluation of Cryptococcus neoformans virulence in a number of nonmammalian hosts suggests that C. neo formans is a nonspecific pathogen, which may facilitate the in vivo study of fungal virulence and efficacy of antifungal therapies.

TL;DR: Topics focused on in this article include species description, pathogenesis, life cycle, capsule, and stress response, which serve to highlight the specializations in virulence that have occurred in this unique encapsulated melanin-forming yeast that causes global deaths estimated at more than 600,000 annually.

TL;DR: Recent progress is reviewed in understanding of how fungal-signalling circuits operate at the molecular level to sense and respond to a plethora of environmental cues.

TL;DR: The spectrum of mutations identified provides insights into the genetics underlying the micro-evolution of a laboratory strain, and identifies mutations involved in stress responses, mating efficiency, and virulence.

TL;DR: The order and genomic arrangement of the duplicated gene pairs and their common phylogenetic origin provide evidence for an ancestral whole-genome duplication (WGD) event that resulted in the expansion of multiple gene families related to cell growth and signal transduction, as well as secreted aspartic protease and subtilase protein families, which are known fungal virulence factors.