Overcoming nutritional immunity: micronutrient acquisition mechanisms of pathogenic fungi

Duncan is a medical mycologist interested in the struggle for essential micronutrients between human pathogenic fungi and their hosts. Certain trace minerals, such as iron and zinc, are actively withheld from pathogens in a process called nutritional immunity. Therefore, pathogenic microbes must have evolved specialised uptake systems in order to proliferate in their hosts and cause disease. Duncan is using a combination of molecular and cellular biology, together with models of host-pathogen interactions, to dissect the mechanisms of micronutrient assimilation by the major human fungal pathogen, Candida albicans. His aim is to understand how this process contributes to pathogenesis and disease.