Abstract
Pathogenic fungi and oomycetes give rise to a significant number of animal and plant diseases. While the spread of these pathogenic microorganisms is increasing globally, emerging resistance to antifungal drugs is making associated diseases more difficult to treat. High-throughput screening (HTS) and new developments in lab-on-a-chip (LOC) platforms promise to aid the discovery of urgently required new control strategies and anti-fungal/oomycete drugs. In this review, we summarize existing HTS and emergent LOC approaches in the context of infection strategies and invasive growth exhibited by these microorganisms. To aid this, we introduce key biological aspects and review existing HTS platforms based on both conventional and LOC techniques. We then provide an in-depth discussion of more specialized LOC platforms for force measurements on hyphae and to study electro- and chemotaxis in spores, approaches which have the potential to aid the discovery of alternative drug targets on future HTS platforms. Finally, we conclude with a brief discussion of the technical developments required to improve the uptake of these platforms into the general laboratory environment.
Highlights
We focus on existing high-throughput screening (HTS) to develop potential anti-fungal drugs and recent progress in force measurements on fungi and oomycetes, used to better understand the infective process and potentially inform future drug discovery
We briefly introduce emerging LOCs related to the study of electro- and chemotaxis in spores, processes that aid motile spores in finding plant targets and suitable infection sites. These latter topics are of particular importance as force generation mechanisms and spore sensing of plant targets may present alternative targets for anti-fungal/oomycete drug development on future High-throughput screening (HTS) platforms
Given the significant diseases caused by fungi and oomycetes and the emergence of antifungal resistance, the efficient identification of new or alternative antifungal agents is of high priority
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The LOC approaches, in particular, extend HTS to the isolation of individual cells at specific stages of the fungal/oomycete life cycle, and we cover the methodologies that can be used to enable these including microfluidic droplets, hydrodynamic flow-assisted manipulation and pneumatic microvalves This is followed by a more specialized review of methods that have previously been used for force measurements on hyphae and other organisms, such as optical tweezers and strain gauges, and cover the more recent on-chip approaches using LOC techniques. We briefly introduce emerging LOCs related to the study of electro- and chemotaxis in spores, processes that aid motile spores in finding plant targets and suitable infection sites These latter topics are of particular importance as force generation mechanisms and spore sensing of plant targets may present alternative targets for anti-fungal/oomycete drug development on future HTS platforms
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