Talk:Exophiala pisciphila/Archive 1

Archive 1

Nancy Yang Peer Review:

General comments:

• Overall, I think your outline is very strong! I liked that you have many essential and clear points that are supported by sufficient references, and follow a logical flow -making it very easy to read.
• I think your sub-headings are sufficient, however your fungi is relatively interesting and I think the article can benefit from having the addition of some unique sub-headings. The specifics of this suggestion are mentioned in some of the points below.
• Here are a few of my suggestions, with some linked articles at the end that I found, thinking you may find them informative and can help support your points.

Introduction

• Regarding your first point about how the genus is commonly called the "black yeasts group", I found multiple papers that refer to it as the "dark septate endophyte", which I believe means the same thing, but could be a more commonly used term?

History and taxonomy

• I like the logical order of points in this section!

Growth and morphology

• You mention that it is a filamentous fungi, but have many points describing the its conidia. Perhaps you can first mention the conditions at which it likes to form conidia.
• In a paper by Zhan et al. (2016), they were able to find that Tricyclazole was able to reduce the growth and sporulation of E. pisciphila under cadmium (Cd) stress (elaborated under "habitat and ecology" section).

Physiology

• The last point about how an antibiotic compound was discovered from it could possibly be appropriate for another subheading called "uses" or "antibiotic discovery" -simply beacuse I think it is a very interesting point, and relevant because antibiotic resistance is an extremely popular topic in science and medicine today. (The sub-section could follow "habitat and ecology").
• Another reason I found supporting the above point that E. pisiciphilia may have biochemical uses is that the group Wang et al. (2011) were able to discover new cytotoxic metabolites (a new polyketide compound 1 and a new naturally occurring chromone derivative 2) from this "soil-derived fungal strain".
• You can include something that was discovered by Zhan et al. (2015): Cd-phosphate complexes were the major chemical form in E. pisciphila. This point about its physiology is interesting because while Cd is a heavy metal that is toxic to most soil fungi even at a low concentrations (as a serious environmental problem) some fungi present cellular mechanisms to tolerate Cd stress and therefore survive in heavy metals polluted soils. And they conclude that this species is one of the fungi that can do this, by a proposed mechanism of binding Cd to cell walls in Cd-phosphate complexes created by the fungi.

Habitat and ecology

• The last two points made about causing skin lesions and possible affecting the immunosuppressed population (the "case" could be elaborated on"), could also perhaps enter another sub-heading titled "pathogenicity" or "disease" -however it is also fitting in this section!
• Wei et al. (2016) also support your third point by calling this species a "fish-pathogenic fungi"
• A very significant finding about this species' ecology that I found and alluded to in the "physiology" section is its ability to live in heavily metal-polluted soils. Wei et al. found through surveys that E. pisciphila, is one of the most common root-associated fungi in zinc/lead heavily contaminated slag heaps, southwest China, and that its colonization significantly alleviates the metal toxicity and improves the tolerance of host plants to excessive Cd2+. It was found to possess high tolerance to elevated metal conditions both in vivo and in vitro, even showing a metal affinity in vivo, in which colonization intensity in maize roots increases with elevated soil metal contents. Like Zhan et al., this group also proposes a mechanism for it's heavy metal tolerance, which is that it significantly down-regulates the expression of EpNramp (a main transporter involved in Cd hyperaccumulation) under elevated Cd2+ stress.
• This point is also brought up by Zhan et al. in a 2016 paper, where it was shown that a decrease in Cd tolerance of E. pisciphila (when fungal growth and sporulation were reduced) could be due to tricyclazole treatment. Therefore because this point was brought up in multiple papers, I think it is worth investigating/mentioning in the article.

References The papers I mentioned above are here:

• https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-015-5012-7 (Subcellular distribution and chemical forms of cadmium in a dark septate endophyte (DSE), Exophiala pisciphila)
• https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/16/4/2796 (Cytotoxic Metabolites from the Soil-Derived Fungus Exophiala Pisciphila)
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147651315301573 (Functional and transcript analysis of a novel metal transporter gene EpNramp from a dark septate endophyte (Exophiala pisciphila))

Some suggestions

• references and formatting look OK
• could you use more common language for some of the terms like obovoid, subglobose, percurrent, floccose, etc?
• you might be able to locate more content from [[[1]]]
• the genus Exophiala not the Exophiala genus
• good start overall

Medmyco (talk) 19:37, 17 November 2018 (UTC)