Mycology 2019

Fungal Identification and quantification

Fungal infections pose unique challenges to molecular diagnostics; fungal molecular diagnostics consequently lags behind bacterial and viral counterparts. Nevertheless, fungal infections are often life-threatening and early detection and identification of species is crucial to successful intervention. A high throughput PCR-based method is needed that is independent of culture, is sensitive to the level of one fungal cell per milliliter of blood or other tissue types, and is capable of detecting species and resistance mutations.