My Leicester colleague Catherine Pashley has done a lot of work
in this area, so I was interested in this recent minireview in
PLOS Pathogens. - What Is Asthma? - Why Do Fungi Make Spores?
And a Guide to Terminology - Do Fungal Spores Cause Asthma? -
Which Species Are Associated with Asthma? - If Identification to
Species Matters, Will New Tools Provide Needed Data? Asthma and
the Diversity of Fungal Spores in Air. (2013) PLoS Pathog 9(6):
e1003371. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1003371 The diversity of
fungal spores in air is vast, but research on asthma focuses on
a handful of easily identified, culturable species. Ecologists
are developing new tools to probe communities and identify the
full complement of fungi in habitats. These tools may enable
identification of novel asthma triggers, but scientists involved
in public health or medicine rarely interact with mycologists
focused on ecology. With this primer, my aim is to facilitate
communication by providing doctors with a basic, modern guide to
spores, by teac