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The paper
S. Fukuda et al., “Trade-off between plasticity and velocity in mycelial growth,” mBio, 12:e03196–20, 2021.
Much of a filamentous fungus’s life involves infiltrating organic tissue: weaving its hyphae between cells in decaying animals, for example, or, in the case of some pathogenic species, invading plants through tiny pores in their leaves. The tips of these fungi grow by synthesizing new cell wall on the extending side, but scientists have puzzled over how they control growth through such tight spaces.
Norio Takeshita of the University of Tsukuba in Japan approached the question by growing seven species of fungi in a microfluidic device with tiny channels, the narrowest just 1 micrometer across—smaller than the diameter of typical hyphae. His team used live imaging techniques, some involving labeling intracellular components with green fluorescent protein, to see how each species handled the challenge. The species turned out to respond ...
