Chytridiomycosis causes catastrophic organism-wide metabolic dysregulation including profound failure of cellular energy pathways.

ABSTRACT: Chytridiomycosis is among several recently emerged fungal diseases of wildlife that have caused decline or extinction of naïve populations. Despite recent advances in understanding pathogenesis, host response to infection remains poorly understood. Here we modelled a total of 162 metabolites across skin and liver tissues of 61 frogs from four populations (three long-exposed and one naïve to the fungus) of the Australian alpine tree frog (Litoria verreauxii alpina) throughout a longitudinal exposure experiment involving both infected and negative control individuals. We found that chytridiomycosis dramatically altered the organism-wide metabolism of clinically diseased frogs. Chytridiomycosis caused catastrophic failure of normal homeostatic mechanisms (interruption of biosynthetic and degr

SUBMITTER: Grogan LF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5974026 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature