Fungal sensing of host environment

To survive inside a host, fungi have to adapt to a changing and often hostile environment and therefore need the ability to recognize what is going on around them. To adapt to different host niches, they need to sense external conditions such as temperature, pH and to recognize specific host factors. The ability to respond to physiological changes inside the host, independent of being in a commensal, pathogenic or even symbiotic context, implicates mechanisms for sensing of specific host factors. Because the cell wall is constantly in contact with the surrounding, fungi express receptors on the surface of their cell wall, such as pheromone receptors, which have important roles, besides mediating chemotropism for mating. We are not restricting the discussion to the human host because the receptors and mechanisms used by different fungal species to sense their environment are often similar even for plant pathogens. Furthermore, the natural habitat of opportunistic pathogenic fungi with the potential to cause infection in a human host is in soil and on plants. While the hosts' mechanisms of sensing fungal pathogens have been addressed in the literature, the focus of this review is to fill the gap, giving an overview on fungal sensing of a host-(ile) environment. Expanding our knowledge on host-fungal interactions is extremely important to prevent and treat diseases of pathogenic fungi, which are important issues in human health and agriculture but also to understand the delicate balance of fungal symbionts in our ecosystem.