Structure of cell walls in yeast and other fungi

Published on November 30, 2022   51 min

A selection of talks on Infectious Diseases

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0:00
Hello, my name is Peter Lipke from the Department of Biology at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Today I'm going to talk about glycans and glycoproteins in the cell walls of yeast and other fungi.
0:16
Fungal cell walls are not well known, but they are the cellular equivalent of the extracellular matrix in animal cells. They have many of the same functions, including protection of the cell surface and interaction with the environment. We're going to talk about the structure and biosynthesis of the components of the cell walls and about relatively recent discoveries about how the cell walls are assembled and modified. On this slide, you see some electron micrographs of yeast cell walls, mostly with the extracellular environment at the top. The visible structures are the walls. The membranes are not visible in these micrographs, but you can see the cytoplasm interior to the membrane towards the bottom. On the left to the slide, you see a cartoon of the arrangement of the components of the cell wall and we'll use this cartoon to orient ourselves as we go through the lecture. If you look at the bottom of the slide, there are the reference numbers for this particular slide. The last two slides are a bibliography with numbered references, so you can access the relevant literature.
1:21
This lecture will have eight sections. First, we will talk about graphic conventions for how we depict the glycans. Next, we will talk about the overall architecture of yeast cell walls. The third section will include the structure and biosynthesis of individual components of the wall. Then, we will have a section about the assembly and cross-linking of all of these components into a macromolecular complex. Fifth, we will talk about how the wall is modified to accommodate both environmental needs and the needs of cellular differentiation. Sixth is a brief discussion about how general the model is across the evolution of fungi. Seventh is a one-slide summary of interactions between wall components and the mammalian immune system, a subject that would be a separate series of lectures based on thousands of papers. Finally, there is a brief recap and bibliography.

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Structure of cell walls in yeast and other fungi

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