On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 18:21:26 +0200, "Yoram Gerchman
(gerchman at Princeton.EDU)" <gerchman at Princeton.EDU> wrote:
>Greetings all
>We are starting an under-grad project looking for antifungal materials in plants. What would be a good model system for bio-assays? It should be easy to grow and BSL-1 please
Well, the simplest would be ordinary yeast.
If you want a filamentous fungus, maybe a Penicillium or Neurospora.
Neurospora has long been a model system for fungal genetics. The
problem with using these is not so much growing them but keeping them
from growing in other expts.
If the idea is to look for a general anti-fungal, the yeast would
illustrate the idea.
A practical anti-fungal has to pass the test of not being toxic to
human cells. Most things that you will find in a general screen will
fail that test -- which is why general antifungals are rare. You
should at least discuss this issue even if you don't do anything with
it.
The more sophisticated approach is to focus on some specific activity
of fungi. This is probably more than you want in context, but maybe
worth discussing at some point.
bob
