The role of cell wall polysaccharides in the life cycles of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In recent decades, the global spread of the aquatic chytrid fungi Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans has led to an amphibian mass extinction.Amphibian infection with these organisms begins when motile chytrid zoospores adhere to the amphibian epidermis before maturing into sessile zoosporangia that disrupt epithelium integrity, ultimately leading to amphibian death.A new generation of zoospores, produced within zoosporangia, are released through discharge tubes at the zoosporangium surface to begin the cycle anew.Interrupting zoospore release could therefore be an attractive strategy to break the infection cycle.Fungal cell walls mediate many essential processes, including maintaining cell integrity and forming specialized structures with unique functions, such as discharge tubes.These structures often exhibit a unique cell wall composition which supports their specialized functions.Discharge tubes, which uniquely mediate zoospore dispersal, may therefore require a cell wall composition that is distinct from the rest of the chytrid.We therefore hypothesize that cell wall polysaccharides play an important role in the development of discharge tubes and thereby contribute to chytrid zoospore release.Biochemical characterization of chytrid cell walls revealed the presence of both chitin and cellulose, the latter having not previously been identified in fungal cell walls.Confocal microscopy experiments suggested that these polymers exhibit distinct distribution patterns throughout zoosporangia, with chitin forming a cap over emerging discharge tubes.Further microscopy experiments suggested that this chitin is deacetylated to form chitosan which may subsequently be degraded to allow for zoospore release.The role of chitin and cellulose in zoospore release was probed using glycan synthesis inhibitors, and findings suggested that chitin, but not cellulose, is required for discharge tube formation and spore release.Ultimately, this work revealed that chytrids have a unique cell wall composition consisting of chitin and cellulose, which
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".