cc >> Tom Zinnen: Welcome,
everyone, to Wednesday
I'm Tom Zinnen. I work Nite at the Lab.
Biotechnology Center. I also work for UW Extension
Cooperative Extension, and on behalf of those organizations
and our other sponsors, Wisconsin Public Television, the
Wisconsin Alumni Association, and the Division of Continuing
Studies, thanks for coming to Wednesday Nite at the Lab.
We do this every Wednesday
Tonight, it's my pleasure to night, 50 times a year.
She's a professor in the introduce to you Nancy Keller.
Microbiology and Immunology and in the Department of
Bacteriology. She received her doctoral
training in the Department of Plant Pathology at Cornell
University. Her postdoctoral training with
the US Department of Agriculture
her to the genus Aspergillus in New Orleans first introduced
identification of enzymes required to produce the
mycotoxin aflatoxin. Since
Dr. Keller has not only retained that period of time,
how Aspergillus fungi produce toxin metabolites and using this
knowledge to design controlled
diseases caused by pathogenic Aspergilli, I would just say
Aspergilluses but that's all right.
[LAUGHTER] She has
research to work in the field of drug discovery utilizing
knowledge gained from the natural product formation
by fungi. This is one of the funnest
titles we've ever had:
and Thrill Us." Please "Aspergillus Can Kill Us
Professor Keller to Wednesday Nite at the Lab.
[APPLAUSE]
Nancy Keller: Well, hopefully we'll have a little fun tonight.
And can everyone hear me okay? >> Yes.
Okay. Wave if you can't or otherwise.
Okay. So, what I
is introduce you, first, thought I would do
I think many of you know to Aspergillus.
don't. For those of you who were
sitting here earlier and you saw
objects on the YouTube, that was the beautiful waving of these
of Aspergillus. So, this a video, an artist's rendering,
of fungus that was first Aspergillus is a genus
a little history here, described in 1729, I'll give you
I guess we call, what do you call a priest?.
Reverend? Micheli or Priest Micheli.
And I was trying really hard to see if I could find some of the
pictures that he drew of
microscope. I couldn't Aspergillus from his very early
find this drawing from Louis Pasteur.
Actually, maybe I can do what is asked and use this little
hoo-dicky here. So this is Louis Pasteur's
drawing of Aspergillus glaucus. And I part that really somewhat
resembles the Aspergillus is
here. And let me just this pshow you what he right
was trying to draw at the time. Aspergillus is a genus of fungus
that produces its sexual spores,
and asexual spores. Pardon and, yes, fungi have both sexual
spores, on top of a stalk that me, these are the asexual
cells that produce these has a vesicle on the top and
And I'm quite sure we're spores that fly into the air.
these spores right now. If probably breathing in some of
doesn't make any difference because your immune system will
kill the spores. Now, where did this name come
from? So here's the really interesting
part with this fungus. So Reverend Micheli was a
scientist. He was also
Monsignor. >> Monsignor.
And what he did notice right
stalk actually looked quite a bit like an instrument that's
used by the priests in
This instrument is known as an the Catholic church.
the fungus Aspergillus. And aspthis gives you an idea oflled
how similar the likeness is between this fungus and the
Aspergillus. You can
sprinkling the holy water, and see here the priest
spore is coming off it doeof the Aspergillus.ke the
And this, for those of you who
that YouTube I showed earlier, are interested and mesmerized by
So, now that I've introduced you this is the address.
moment to tell you how I got to Aspergillus, I'll take a
Tom did give a bit of my interested in working with this.
ask, did I start working background, but why, you might
And I will tell you that I with fungi and Aspergillus.
episode that brought actually did have an earlier
I was a Peace Corps volunteer before I went to graduate
school, and I was a volunteer in Africa in a country called
Lesotho. And where
noticed that oftentimes the food was really in very poor
condition. We usually had enough food, but
it was often tainted with mold. And a lot of my students got
sick over the course of the many years I taught there.
So I became very interested in
and when I was in the Peace aCorps, one of the advisers ind,
Lesotho was actually an alumni
taken international agriculture ocourses, and he's the one thatd
got me interested in Cornell
And ever since I got my degree, I have always worked with fungi.
I really enjoy fungi very much. They're fascinating organisms.
And I've spent most of my career
So this title we had that wAspergilli can kill you or.
thrill you, well, it is true. And I want to introduce you to
some of the big players in Aspergillus.
There's probably about 180
and some of them are species to 200 hundred species,
There's a fungus called Aspergillus fumigatus which is
the most common cause of the
Aspergillus. And then methe Aspergillus that Iy
first started working with
Aspergillus flavus and its was Aspergillus flavus.
are the very common food cousin, Aspergillus parasiticus,
produce the mycotoxin called contaminating fungi which
And we'll talk a little bit more aflatoxin in our food crops.
the most potent natural acarcinogen known to humankind.s
I'll also point out that
most common Aspergillus to Aspergillus flavus is the second
cause various diseases. A disease of the mammal caused
by Aspergillus is known as an Aspergillosis.
Now, we do have Aspergilli that we like that are on the positive
side, and why are they useful?
fungi, are one of our most Well, Aspergilli, and other
composting and destroying, common organisms we need for
There's a particular Aspergillus recycling, carbon and nitrogen.
which is one of the best called Aspergillus nidulans,
genetics. We actually establiwork with this onems for
quite a bit. The history
fungus is very interesting too of this particular
II, but maybe after and wif you're interested.ld War
Then we have the food production Aspergilli.
And Aspergillus niger is a
enzymes that we use both fungus where we get a lot of
Also this is the fungus where we for food, citric acid.
use to make what's, I think it's called stone-washed jeans.e
Can I interrupt you? >> Yes.
What do you mean by fungus? >> By fungus?
A fungus is an organism that has
I'll give you an example of itone you probably know well:ee,
mushrooms. Mushrooms are fungi.
A fungus is one; fungi are many.
life. >> Well, why And they're just a kingdom of
fungus? >> Why is it a fungus?
Well, the fungi are put into
sequences and the enzymes and proteins they make, and this one
is classified, mushrooms belong to this kingdom based on their
evolution and the sequences of
And they reproduce by tspores. >> Most of them do..
Okay? I'm sorry, I
assumption that everyone was there making an
Yes, they reproduce by knew what a fungus was.
I think you probably have seen spores, most of them.
called Penicillium, in your Arefrigerator on food that youus
don't eat readily. Or on
I'm quite sure you have all seen these fungi.
Now, the Aspergilli we like, for
especially, are Aspergillus oryzae and Aspergillus sojae.
I'll show you some
These are the fungi that are pictures of these.
and sake and various used in making, oh, soy sauce
And then we have a series of fermented foods.
a lot of the pharmaceuticals we Asuse to combat drugs, I mean,et
combat other organisms. For example, these echinocandins
right here. These are actually compounds
made by Aspergillus nidulans and
kill other fungi. So fungi Aspergillus sydowii, and they
with each other. and they sometimes like to kill
the other fungus so they
Lovastatin, maybe some of you are familiar with statins or
even use these statins. These are compounds that help
people with high cholesterol, and there are many others too.
So now I'm going to give you
particular good and an exabad Aspergilli. these
Aspergillosis, as I told you
name for diseases earcaused by Aspergillus.ric
And this is becoming a very serious problem in the world
because we're now able to keep
wouldn't, and we keep them alive people alive where normally we
steroids which lower often by using, let's say,
So what we're finding now is a the immune system.
which lower their immune lot of people that have diseases
diseases. For example, system are getting Aspergillus
AIDS often get Aspergillus people that have
leukemia. You're diseases, diabetics, people with
if you've had some particularly susceptible
The range of diseases are from organ transplant.
have allergies, that can fairly mild, a lot of people
Often you can get a bball in your lung.
That sounds horrible but it's really not the worst thing in
the world. We're pretty good at removing
those aspergillomas, that's what
It's when you start getting invasive growth that the fungus
is growing through your body
control. Now, I told that they're very hard to
180 species of Aspergillus, but there's not that many that cause
disease. One criterion
to grow at 37 degrees because that's the human body.
So these are some of the ones that are more frequently found
in humans. The genetic
nidulans. Amphotericin model Aspergillus
We're having a big problem now B is an antifungal.
being resistant to with a lot of these Aspergilli
Aspergillus niger is antifungal drugs.
Aspergillus terreus is a dark Aspergillus.
It is more resistant than the other Aspergilli to antifungals.
Aspergillus flavus, and the most
Aspergillus fumigatus. common species, as I told you,
electron micrograph, of the conidiophore, the asexual
spores, here's one right
You're going to see a couple here, of this fungus.
These are just some examples of what can happen if you get these
infections. I will tell you by the time you
see a lesion on your skin,
I don't know what tissue that's not a very good sign.
sporulating colony right there. This is fingernails that have
been infected with
The very common disease is this aspergilloma.
You can see here is lungs and here is a ball.
You really can get rid of these balls pretty well.
And this is a case where they didn't get rid of the ball very
well though. And this is a lung from someone
who died, and here is one of the, this is a huge
aspergilloma. And if you
stain the lung or any other part of the body which has
Aspergillus in it, you'll see the fungus, and here you will
recognize that Aspergillus
So it's a dead give away or the aspergillum.
Now, the other player which can kill you is the Aspergillus
flavus that produces toxins in
food, you get sick. The yotoxins that fungi produce ine
food and feed are called myco.
Myco fungus. So mycotoxins. for
And really the history of mycotoxins is quite fascinating.
It is felt by historians, although we cannot prove this,
that the 10th plague of Egypt is most likely caused by
mycotoxins. If you read the documentation,
it really sounds exactly
And I've given some of the like a mycotoxin outbreak.
back where we can figure out history over the ages when we go
associated with mycotoxins. I'm not going to go through all
of this now but bring you to what I call modern
mycotoxicology. And this
us understand that fungi can is what actually made
harmful. This happened produce toxins that are very
was a shipment of peanuts from Brazil to England.
The peanuts were used as feed for turkey and chickens, and it
resulted in over hundreds of
England. This is a thousands of poultry dying from
course, and this really set the stage for the scientists to try
to figure out what happened.
And ultimately what they found, Tit was a compound produced bye.
the fungus Aspergillus flavus,
aflatoxin, that thatcaused this disease.name
And what happens here are four turkey poults.
This one was fed aflatoxin. You can see it's stunted, and
the liver has a fatty discolored tissue look.
This turkey is not
Since then, aflatoxin periodically comes into the
news. One of the more interesting news
items, I guess, about, geez,
whThat was about... >> '91.ar?
'91. Wow, okay.
So it was weaponized and
Probably it was all destroyed before it could do anything as
the bomb exploded,
And all of us who were working but nevertheless.
from the federal government to with aflatoxin got phone calls
of Aspergillus to anyone ask if we had sent any strains
That was a funny question to ask we shouldn't have.
all over the world, but becI did get a phone call. is
This is what it's going to
You'll recognize this corn ear, and this fuzzy green stuff is
Aspergillus flavus, and there's the molecule of aflatoxin.
I know only certain people enjoy
I'm quite found of them so to look at chemical structures.
You see that, you don't I wowant to ingest it.any.
Aflatoxin, we're
I do a lot of work with this. We still have not been able to
control it. The fungus
when the environmental is ubiquitous and
to grow in our corn and our conpeanuts and our tree nuts.ing
What we do do in this country,
particular crops to look though, is we analyze these
And the food in our country will not have high levels of
aflatoxin. However, as
do not look at our pet you can see here, we
Since I've been working with foods so carefully.
dog poisonings. I'll Aspergillus there's been three
The first one was in Texas where just go through this.
time at Texas A&M. Much Imore severe is the constantat
human poisoning in Kenya. Now,
bit. I had told you I havaflatoxin was alittle
carcinogen and it is. And you can die from liver
cancer from aflatoxin, but when you have it in high amounts, it
is toxic and can kill people
weeks. When you see and ana poisoning case,o a few
you know there has
And then in 2006, '05 and '06, been massive amounts.
poisoning case in therthe United States.dog
There's been a whole lot of breakouts just recently.
There's frequently aflatoxin
China, in milk and cooking oil contamination in items from
December there was aflatoxin recently, and just again in
different companies. And found in dog food from three
very serious problem this is really becoming a
So there's a little interesting article if you guys might want
to read it. Let's switch, though.
I've given you a lot of bad news about the Aspergilli.
There's a lot of good news too. And so here is, and this is
quite an interesting
oryzae. Why do I say juxtaposition, Aspergillus
Well, we have now actually it's interesting?
Aspergilli. I think all sequof you probably are many
familiar that the human genome
given us a lot of very has been sequenced which has
Well, so have many fungi. And what we found out is when
Aspergillus oryzae genome was sequenced, I am going backwards,
they said, huh, it's
What's going on here? Well, it turns out that
Aspergillus oryzae, which we
does seem to be a tamed makeAspergillus flavus.ually
There's a lot of speculation as to what happened over the years,
how we got this safe
That is something we could talk about after the lecture if
you're interested. But
oryzae is the fungus that is in any case, Aspergillus
yummy condiments, used tfoods and liquids. very
So it's really interesting. There's a YouTube, and I'm not
going to do this because this would take too much time, but a
very interesting YouTube which
how they put the fungus shows into the soy beans.uce and
So soy sauce comes from soy beans that's been fermented with
Aspergillus. This is a
You have soy bean cake, they little recipe here.
Here we add Aspergillus oryzae. You put it in these different
vats, and you get a mash called koji.
Is that in China? >>
You can buy koji. And now what I have to show you,
I have a little surprise
Aspergillus are so important in Japan that the national fungus
is Aspergillus oryzae, and
oryzae. My one graduate they'vestudent is fromergillus
Japan, and when she went
[LAUGHTER] She brought back home to visit...
[LAUGHTER] We actually hang this
in our lab. So this is
the good Aspergillus. What else do we get from
Aspergillus? Thanks to
come home. Maybe some peof you have seenl
this. This is from World War II.
So what's this all about? Well, I think some of you might
know about this finding, this accidental finding, by Sir
Alexander Fleming in 1929. He noticed he had a petri dish
of bacteria, and what he saw is that a fungus had landed into
this petri dish and it was
There was an inhibition zone killing the bacteria.
grow. What he and that wothers subsequentlycteria
found is that the fungus
penicillin. Now he produced a compound called
from a fungus called actually identified this
Aspergillus nidulans also makes penicillin, and much of the
genetics in biochemistry was
system. It turns out worked out with this model
of useful pharmaceuticals tfrom Aspergilli.
Now, we had mentioned lovastatin.
I'm just guessing some of you might actually have this
prescription. And here is the chemical
structure. Aspergillus
fungus of choice to make lovastatin.
Now, I've given you a sort
different Aspergilli, and this of brief introduction to the
where I'm just going to tell you is a nice little segue right now
our laboratory. As I a little bit about what we do in
chemical structures aren't said earlier, I know
have to admire the everybody's cup of tea, but you
And when you look at these, what diversity here, I'm sure.
wow, fungi make these. I want you to think is that, oh,
Aspergillus. Actually, Not all these are from
possibly put in all the compounds from Aspergillus, but
this is just to show you that the compounds are very diverse.
And these compounds are very bioactive.
And that's the main reason why
problem for us or a benefit. Aspergilli can sometimes be a
destructive to the animal body, though in small amounts it might
be good. Here's, I'm
yeah, here's penicillin here. Here's aflatoxin.
Here's the statin, lovastatin.
This is another antibiotic. This is bad.
That's bad. Bad. Bad.
Really bad. Bad.
Good. Neutral.
We have one somewhat
So what are we doing? I forgot to, I wanted to put in
this slide, too, to tell you
compounds by the fungus of that the production of these
humankind, but they're a course has nothing to do with
And it depends in the lifestyle and the life stage of the fungus
when it's going to make all of these different compounds.
So right here is our
aspergillum. All Aspergilli conidiwill produce onem the
of these. And each
spores will fly in the air, and when they land on a substrate
that they can obtain nutrition, they're going to germinate.
Right there it's germinating. Now that substrate could be, oh,
a seed. Or it could be decayed
vegetative matter. Or it could be your lungs.
After it has germinated,
Under the right conditions that mycelium could form the asexual
stage again, and you
Under some conditions, mycelium can produce the sexual stage,
and it makes these organelles,
cleistothecia, where which are called sclerotia or
Now, I've colored some of these different parts of the fungus
different colors because they are different colors and a lot
of this has to do with some of the chemical structure.
And in these different tissues
So, the fungus is very fluid you get different compounds.
structures and different and it will produce different
on the environment. One secondinteresting thing isnding
Aspergillus produces its asexual
only have sex when spores in the light and will
There are other things that the fungus responds to,
and, in particular, I'm going to focus right here, is a lot
of these chemicals that the fungus is producing are in
response to stresses, particularly when the fungus
meets other microbes. And that would be, where's that
little arrow? Here it is.
And by other microbes it could
a bacterium. So let me be another fungus or it could be
taken advantage of this information to understand how
the fungus makes these chemicals
some therapies to stop the fungi and hopefully ultimately find
us but also maybe that we find new drugs. invading
We made a fantastic discovery, really.
We were very fortunate to find a gene called laeA.
This is now in the fungal world very famous.
I don't think anybody here has
works with fungus now knows about it because it turns out to
be a global regulator of all
earlier. This square those compounds I showed you
we call a thin layer right here is what
And if you put extracts of any chromatography plate.
in a solvent, the compounds orgawill move up the plate.ut it
And what you can see here, this is the wild type fungus, is that
as you put an extract of the
many different compounds fungus on the plate, you can see
And some of these compounds are the structures I showed you
earlier. What we found
protein, laeA, when you remove is this particular
removed, is you lose production of many of these chemical
structures. We'll just
here. I think the main point I want to
show you is that this particular
expression of the genes that protein is required for the
variety of chemicals in mAspergillus and now, it turnsat
out, other fungi. Now,
here gives you an example of this little plate right
I want you to look a little just closely at this plate.A is.
This is a petri dish, and what
these little white we have here is, can you see
Okay. These are larvae objects? >> Yeah.
A fungivore is an insect that eats fungi, and what we did is
we gave it a choice. We put all of the larvae in the
middle of the plate, and in this
Aspergillus, you can actually see wild type there, and in this
section we had the Aspergillus
protein so it no longer produced where we had removed that laeA
And when we found is that all of many chemicals, many toxic.
see, we got a little goofy one the larvae, except for, let's
itself, but all of the larvae made the choice to go to the
fungal strain that
So we know a lot of these toxins produced less toxins.
the fungus. What we are,then asked is if this for
protein is important for making toxins, maybe it's important in
Aspergillus fumigatus, the
humans. So what we fungus that causes disease in
that protein from the human pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus.
We found something
It does appear to be very interesting.
This particular slide here is we a virulence factor.
mouse model, to test used the Muri model, that is the
And what you can see is when you for pathogenicity.
percent survival of the mice. rWe have a clue as to how thisr
happens. Here is the
Aspergillus fumigatus, and here is the spore of the mutant where
we removed laeA. You can
bit different. The more simportant slide aree
these red ones. What we did is we labeled the
fungal spore with a dye that makes it appear green.
And right here is a macrophage. So in our lungs, we have
macrophage that one of their big
spores and kill the spores jobs is to swallow up fungal
into the rest of our body. before they germinate and go
macrophage are so-so at gobbling And as you can see, the
when we remove the laeA it just sucked them all in, and it kills
them much more readily. Part
of toxins in this fungus. So, we next asked, okay, laeAs
regulates a lot of the toxins in
one of these are important Aspergillus fumigatus, but which
So what you're looking at now is a schematic of the eight
chromosomes of Aspergillus. So every fungus has a certain
number of chromosomes depending on the genus, and Aspergilli all
have eight chromosomes. What we could tell from
sequencing it is that there would be areas of the
chromosomes where we would
could produce toxins. And rthese red arrows show youew
all of the toxin gene clusters
So it really regulates a lot. One of the gene clusters we
wanted to find and investigate
by laeA that make this molecule. was a cluster of genes regulated
gliotoxin. Now, gliotoxin This has been knownlled
for about 80 years now. And it was isolated from
Aspergillus fumigatus and other fungi in the 1930s, 1920s and
1930s. And it was found to be a very
toxic compound. Whenever
you might want to be a little leery about a compound.
And what they found out is that this compound actually killed
other fungi. Now we get into our interesting
story here about how fungi will make compounds to kill other
fungi. And so at
thinking about maybe we could use this gliotoxin as an
antifungal to control fungal
situations. However, diseases in agricultural
very effectively, so it also kills humans
What we were able to do by that idea was trashed.
likely to make something like this is find this cluster of
genes regulated by laeA and Aspergillus fumigatus.
And what we did is we deleted these genes, particularly the
first gene gliZ. The
protein called a transcription gene gliZ is a type of
highly likely that if you removed gliZ none of the other
genes would work and
And indeed that was the case. This is another thin layer
chromatography plate, and we've grown the fungus and run the
extracts to look for
And here you see wild type, and here's gliotoxin plus a bunch of
other things you don't
If you remove laeA, again you can see most of the compounds
have gone. This time
removed gliZ only, and what you can see is gliotoxin is now
absent from this thin layer chromatography.
There's a few other compounds missing too, but most of them
are still there. So gliZ
It is specific for gliotoxin is not global like laeA.
And this is just a complement. and gliotoxin derivatives.
added gliZ back to the fungus We and gliotoxin is back.nd
And what we found, this was not surprising because other people
had shown this, it had been known that gliotoxin causes
self death. Apoptotic death is when
basically a cell
And when mammalian cells are commits suicide.
self-destruct. And what expwe were able to seethey
here, this is just a graph where
type fungus and added we tothem to neutrophils. wild
Neutrophils are the other cells in our immune system that
protect us from fungi and bacteria.
And this is the percent death of
even remembering how long we did the neutrophils over, I'm not
about 50% of the neutrophils this right now, but you can see
from the wild type, but if you died when we added an extract
mutant, hardly any died at all. So indeed, gliotoxin, which we
once thought of to use as an
serious contributor to antifungal, is really a very
Now, I'm going to show you, though, how tricky the fungus
is. Now we're back again to this
particular gene cluster. All
that are required of thto make gliotoxin.teins
Now, I told you that people were
use gliotoxin as an antifungal? Because it kills other fungi.
It does it very well. Why doesn't Aspergillus
fumigatus kill itself with gliotoxin?
Well, that's what is really very
to give fungi a lot of credit ihere, is when a fungus makes ae
toxin that kills other fungi, it almost always has inside the
cluster of genes making its toxin one protein that protects
itself from its own toxin. And
fumigatus, gliT encodes a protein that destroys gliotoxin.
And what another lab did last year is they removed gliT from
Aspergillus fumigatus, and then they compared the effect of
gliotoxin when added in the middle of a petri dish in this
mutant to wild type. And
gliotoxin does inhibit as you can see, pure
bit but if you don't have gliT, it's really killing it.e
So this is a very common
All those toxic molecules that situation in fungi.
produces it will have a I'veprotective device so thehat
antifungal doesn't hurt it, just the other fungi.
I'm going to end
And this is a new story in our with one last story.
yet, but I think it lab thawill be shortly.blished
And I'm continuing with Aspergillus fumigatus, the
pathogenic Aspergillus, but we do this with others too.
So we found gliotoxin, now we're
Gliotoxin was actually back to the same schematic.
Well, we wanted to start looking this cluster.
regulated by laeA to look at the at other clusters that are
pathogenicity. And this compounis our latest one.add to
We took one of those clusters and looked for the expression of
genes. This is
Aspergillus fumigatus, and we find that in a wild type fungus
we have a series of four genes
18 or 24 hours after the fungus grows, but if you remove laeA,
they're not expressed. What we have found, and this is
a graduate student in my lab, is
compound. You can see that thit's here in thesee a red
strains. But when you remove the genes
that make it, it disappears. And
red compound, to be a compound called endocrocin.s
It was not known that Aspergillus fumigatus made
endocrocin. Endocrocin
Endocrocin belongs to a type of molecules called anthraquinones
coming from fungi that are
So these are swaths of cloth used in the dye making system.
different anthraquinones that have been dyed from
Beautiful. And, indeed, Yun was able to
show that several of these
anthraquinone, and she is gputting together a chemical,
pathway. This probably
maybe two or three is interesting to
So we'll go by that. But of you. [LAUGHTER]
this, she wanted to ask, where what is most intriguing with
This endocrocin? And if isyou remember, I showede?
you a few slides ago, that
different tissues. So what different compounds are made in
fungus and then she would collect extracts from either the
auger the fungus grows on, the
the conidium stalks middleor just the conidia.lium,
It's the conidia of Aspergillus fumigatus that come into your
lungs and cause the initial damage.
And you can see her results where she looked at extracts
from different parts
And what we see, this is the of the fungus.
media, it is in the conidia that endocrocin here, two different
this endocrocin is formed. And enter our lungs where most of
is pathogenicity tests. She has made some strains where
she removed a gene required for endocrocin and looked at
survivability of these mutants
type. This time she mawe're using a fly, wild
Drosophila model, and you can see from our initial data is
that endocrocin also appears
because when you remove it, tthe flies survive longer.or
Well, that wraps up my talk today, but I really need to end
by showing you the people who've
years. I am, basically, just an
observer now. I love
looking at the fungi, but I don't do any of the work.
These are just showing a lot of the people in my lab from this
summer. Graduate
students, postdocs, stvisiting scientists.e
So these are the people that
what I just showed deserve all of the credit for
[APPLAUSE]