Month/Year of Graduation
5-2025
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science (B.S.)
Department
Biology
First Advisor
Jill Blankenship
Abstract
The fungus Candida albicans is both a commensal organism of the human microbiome as well as a major human pathogen. The ability of this fungus to switch between yeastlike and filamentous forms of growth is linked to pathogenesis. The Blankenship lab has demonstrated that there are problems with the in vitro methods used to study this process. One of these issues, which had not been investigated in depth, was the standard use of culture tubes in liquid filamentation assays. Anecdotal evidence from the lab suggested that inducing filamentation in microscopy dishes yields higher rates of filamentation than the standard practice of growing cells in a culture tube and pipetting them onto a glass slide. This work examines discrepancies between the methods and the possibility that this discrepancy is due to a preferential selection of C. albicans in its yeastlike form when pipetting. The use of each technique under ideal filamentation conditions is compared, along with pipetting samples from both conditions to microscope slides, after different time points of incubation. The data appears to support the hypothesis that pipetting skews the ratios of yeast:filamentous cells.
Recommended Citation
Funke, Ethan, "Examining the Effects of Traditional Culturing Techniques on Filamentation Assays in the Fungus Candida albicans" (2025). Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects. 360.
https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/university_honors_program/360