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Hello. My name is Kwabena Duedu.
I'm a Professor at
Birmingham City University.
Today, I'm going to
talk to you about
a general overview of fungi and
the diseases that
they cause in humans.
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In this first part of
a two-part series,
I'm going to talk about
the general characteristics
and classification of fungi.
I'm going to also cover
the ecology of fungi,
the burden they
have on human life,
and I'm going to mention
a few fungi of
medical importance.
In the second part, I will
cover fungal diseases
more extensively,
their treatment, and
some key things that we need
to remember about them.
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Let's begin with the structure
and general
characteristics of fungi.
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Fungi are eukaryotic
microorganisms
and they are commonly
found in the environment.
Fungi are similar to
plants and animals.
They all have membrane-bound
organelles, unlike
bacteria and archaea, which do
not have membrane-bound
organelles.
Fungi are eukaryotes.
Bacteria and archea on the
other hand, are prokaryotes.
Fungi usually occur in the
form of yeast or molds.
Yeast are unicellular organisms.
Molds are multicellular.
There are some fungi
that can also occur in
both forms, depending on
the conditions that
are available.
All fungi are aerobic,
which means that
they all require
oxygen and air to survive.
There are a few fungi that
are facultative anaerobes,
so they can survive a with
certain minimal amount of air.
However, there are none
that are strict anaerobes.
Some fungi can cause diseases.
Others are beneficial, and
they don't cause any diseases.
There are those who
also just live in
the environment, minding
their own business.
Generally, fungi are
resistant to antibiotics.
Antibiotics are
drugs that are used
against bacteria and as
fungi are not bacteria,
they are not susceptible
to antibiotics.
Here we can see some
common examples
of fungi that we
may come across.
We can find fungi in
the form of mushrooms.
We can find them growing
on the backs of trees,
dead organic matter, on food,
molds that we commonly
see, in rooms,
on walls and others where
we could see mold as well,
and yeast, which for example,
Saccharomyces which is
the baker's yeast,
is used in baking.
They are variants
that can be used in
the brewery industry,
among others.
