Biosynthesis of the Fungal Wall-Mechanisms and Implications The First Fleming Lecture

‘The blue and white and several kinds of hairy mouldy spots...are all of them nothing else but several kinds of small and variously figur’d Mushrooms,...which will not be unworthy of our serious speculation and examination, as I shall by and by shew. ’ Robert Hooke, Microgruphia, 1665. ‘...Consumption 129... Feaver 332...Plague 6544...Thrush 6... ’ The Diseases and cdsudlties this Week, London, From the 12 of September to the 19,1665. In 1665, at the same time as Robert Hooke gives us the first clear account of microscopic fungi, the official record lists thrush as a fatal disease. We now ascribe this to the fungus Cdndida dlbicdns. Perhaps it is surprising that it was not overlooked altogether during the ravages of the Great Plague, but today we recognize it as one of a number of medical mycoses that are becoming increasingly important. Fungi have long been overshadowed as agents of human disease by the more virulent viruses, bacteria and protozoa. However, they are now more prevalent- in part because of the success of Alexander Fleming and his contemporaries in their battle to cure and prevent viral and bacterial disease. Fleming (1929), in his original paper describing penicillin,