CHARACTERIZATION OF EFFECTS OF FORMULATED PLANT EXTRACTS (CLOVE AND CARDAMOM) ON HYPHAL MORPHOGENESIS IN CANDIDA ALBICANS

Abstract

There is a recent estimation of about 8.7 million eukaryotic species on earth, out of which 7% (611,000 species) are fungi. Among them only around 600 species are pathogenic to humans. This relatively small group circumscribe fungi that causes relatively mild infections of the skin (e.g., dermatophytes and Malassezia species), fungi that causes severe cutaneous infections (eg., Sporotrix schenkii) and fungi that have the possibility to cause life threatening systemic infections (eg., Aspergillus fumigates, Cryptococcus neoformans, Hisyoplasma capsulatum and Candida albicans).Actually, Candida species are the fourth most widespread systemic infections in US with crude death rates of upto 50%. In humans, C. albicans causes two major types of infections: 1) Superficial infections (eg. oral or vaginal Candidiasis) and 2) life threatening systemic infections (Mayer F et al., 2013).Candida show two modes of proliferations: 1) hyphal mode, in which elongated tubes are formed by the continuous growth at the tips where the separate cells are marked by septa. 2) Yeast growth mode, where distinct cells are elongated or bud-off daughter cells that typically dissociate from mother cells. In nature, yeast form is less commonly found but it is generally seen in economically and scientifically important organisms such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Some fungi are not restricted to specific growth mode i.e. they can grow either in yeast form or in hyphal form, depending on certain environmental conditions. Such fungi are termed as dimorphic fungi (Whiteway M et al., 2007.