Molecular epidemiology of fungal infections is an area of research that uses molecular markers to study the species and genotype distributions of pathogenic fungi in human populations. Since the 1990s, this field has expanded rapidly. These studies have revealed new pathogen species, origins of emerging and re-emerging fungal infections, relationships between environmental and clinical populations, and the routes of pathogen spread both locally and globally. The advances have been driven by several factors, including our increasing realization of the importance of fungal infections in humans, rapid technological innovations in the types of molecular markers, and broadening collaborations among scientists from different fields and different countries. Together, these advances are refining our understandings of fungal disease outbreaks, transmission dynamics, risk factors, pathogenesis, and etiologic attributes of pathogenic fungi.
In this Research Topic, we will capture these advances by organizing Original Research articles and Reviews, covering the following areas:
1. the diverse molecular markers such as PCR fingerprinting, simple sequence repeats, amplified fragment length polymorphisms, multilocus DNA sequences, and whole-genome sequences used for obtaining genotype data of pathogenic fungi,
2. examples of molecular epidemiologic investigations of the origins of fungal disease outbreaks/epidemics, routes of spread, risk factors, pathogenesis, and
3. environmental distributions, and applications of molecular epidemiology to address new research questions such as the origins and spread of drug resistance and rapid diagnosis in fungal infections.
Molecular epidemiology of fungal infections is an area of research that uses molecular markers to study the species and genotype distributions of pathogenic fungi in human populations. Since the 1990s, this field has expanded rapidly. These studies have revealed new pathogen species, origins of emerging and re-emerging fungal infections, relationships between environmental and clinical populations, and the routes of pathogen spread both locally and globally. The advances have been driven by several factors, including our increasing realization of the importance of fungal infections in humans, rapid technological innovations in the types of molecular markers, and broadening collaborations among scientists from different fields and different countries. Together, these advances are refining our understandings of fungal disease outbreaks, transmission dynamics, risk factors, pathogenesis, and etiologic attributes of pathogenic fungi.
In this Research Topic, we will capture these advances by organizing Original Research articles and Reviews, covering the following areas:
1. the diverse molecular markers such as PCR fingerprinting, simple sequence repeats, amplified fragment length polymorphisms, multilocus DNA sequences, and whole-genome sequences used for obtaining genotype data of pathogenic fungi,
2. examples of molecular epidemiologic investigations of the origins of fungal disease outbreaks/epidemics, routes of spread, risk factors, pathogenesis, and
3. environmental distributions, and applications of molecular epidemiology to address new research questions such as the origins and spread of drug resistance and rapid diagnosis in fungal infections.
