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How fungi are becoming supercharged by climate change

Global warming could spark ‘unpredictable’ changes in fungi, making it more deadly, research shows.
Rising temperatures may cause fungi to be more dangerous to our health, a new study reveals...

Pathogenic fungi are fungi that cause disease in humans and other organisms.
Among the approximately 300 fungi known to be pathogenic to humans, Candida, Aspergillus and Cryptococcus are some of the most well known.
They are currently most dangerous to immunocompromised people who lack the defences to prevent their spread...

Rising global temperatures are predicted to increase fungal diseases in humans, but they could also make those diseases more serious.

Studying the impact of heat stress on fungi, researchers found that higher temperatures led to rapid genetic changes in the human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus.

Higher temperatures were found to stimulate the fungus’s transposable ‘jumping genes’, accelerating the number of mutations and leading to adaptations in the way the genes are used and regulated...

This could lead to higher heat resistance, drug resistance and disease-causing potential, according to the research published in the science journal PNAS.

“This is a fascinating study, which shows how increasing global temperature may affect the fungal evolution in unpredictable directions… One more thing to worry about with global warming,” says Dr Arturo Casadevall, chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University...

Fungal infections are already deadly, killing around 1.7 million people per year - and they're a "growing health threat", according to the World Health Organization (WHO). They are also becoming increasingly resistant to antifungal drugs used to treat them - and we currently lack alternatives.

Four fungi are placed in the 'critical priority group', including pathenogenic yeasts Cryptococcus neoformans, Candida auris and Candida albicans, along with Aspergillus fumigatus, a common mould found in soil.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/02/07/the-last-of-us-minus-the-zombie-part-how-fungi-could-become-supercharged-by-climate-change#:~:text=Rising%20global%20temperatures%20are%20predicted,the%20human%20fungal%20pathogen%20Cryptococcus.