Filamentous Fungi: Biology and Applications

Fungal physiology and life cycles. Fungal cell biology and genetics. Experience with fungal micro- and macro-morphology. Microbial ecology. Secondary metabolism and toxicological aspects. The role of fungi in bacterial, plant and mammalian systems. Fungi in industry. Fungi that cause quality loss of foods, feed and may contaminate biotechnological productions. Fungi that compromise indoor climate. Technological characteristics of common filamentous fungi. Fungal genomics and genome driven discovery. Synthetic biology and construction of fungal cell factories.

To give the student broad knowledge of filamentous fungi of significance for the biotech and food industry, both as production organisms and as contaminants. The course will give the student a comprehensive insight in how fungi grow and interact within a given system. The student will gain experience in interpretation of experimental data from mycological experiments. The students will get insight into recent developments in fungal strain engineering and synthetic biology. Through group work on specific cases the student will become familiar with retrieval and interpretation of the scientific literature outside the textbook.

Lectures and group work