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Updated: Jun 2, 2026

Microfluidic Tools for Probing Fungal-Microbial Interactions at the Cellular Level
Published on: June 23, 2022
The social network: deciphering fungal language
Abigail C Leeder1, Javier Palma-Guerrero, N Louise Glass
1Plant and Microbial Biology Department, The University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3102, USA.
Abstract:
It has been estimated that up to one quarter of the world's biomass is of fungal origin, comprising approximately 1.5 million species. In order to interact with one another and respond to environmental cues, fungi communicate with their own chemical languages using a sophisticated series of extracellular signals and cellular responses. A new appreciation for the linkage between these chemical languages and developmental processes in fungi has renewed interest in these signalling molecules, which can now be studied using post-genomic resources. In this Review, we focus on the molecules that are secreted by the largest phylum of fungi, the Ascomycota, and the quest to understand their biological function.
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