Question

What is medical mycology and why is it important in the medical field?

What is the importance of industrial mycology? what the major contributions from industrial mycology?

Answer 1

1. Medical mycology is the branch of biology in which we study about the identification, taxonomy, the genetic and biochemical properties of fungi and their effect on humans(toxicity and infection).

2.As the fungi are primarily responsible for the decomposition of a wide range of organic substances present in an ecosystem they play a very important role in recycling variety of nutrients and the global carbon cycle. A wide range of medicine can be produced by them. They can be utilised as a sources of food, entheogens, tinder, pesticides.These can be used to produce citric acid, antibiotics and human hormones. These are model research organisms as well.

3. Most commonly the filamentous fungi and yeast(unicellular fungi) are for the manufacture of a variety of useful products like food, metabolites, enzymes. As the fungi are cosmopolitan, they can be easily grown in different environments. Yeast is being used since a long time on industrial scale for the production of certain drugs, food(like bread), beverages(beer, wine), enzymes, bio control agents, pharmaceuticals.

4.One of the major contribution of industrial mycology is the production of antibiotics on a large scale. Various such antibiotics have been produced in industries like penicillin and cephalosporins(the beta lactum antibiotics) obtained from Penicillium chrysogenum and Acremonium chrysogenum, respectively.