Faster Food, Stronger Shape: How Sugar Pathways Shape Fungal Growth

Fungi can change their shape on the fly. When the outside world shifts, they switch between cell forms to survive or infect. Scientists know a lot about the genes that trigger these changes, but they have not looked closely at what fuels them. A new study shows that the sugar‑processing route, called glycolysis, is a key power source for these shape shifts. When the flow of glucose through this pathway slows, fungi lose the ability to make sulfur‑rich amino acids. These molecules are essential for building proteins that help the fungus take on new forms.Adding sulfur amino acids from outside can fix the problem. Both baker’s yeast and a common human pathogen recover their shape‑changing ability when these nutrients are supplied. In mice, a strain of the pathogen missing an important glycolysis enzyme, phosphofructokinase‑1, struggles to survive inside immune cells. It also causes less severe disease in a mouse model of bloodstream infection. Thus, the research links sugar metabolism to sulfur chemistry and shows how this partnership is vital for fungal flexibility and disease.