Can you give us some other examples, kind of maybe more from daily life, of how, um, we might find beneficial or harmful fungi?

Yeah, so another really interesting case, so everyone knows sake wine.

It's, you know, the, the Japanese wine.

Um, it's made from a fungus called Aspergillus oryzae, and they use that to ferment the, the grain to get sake.

The same organism, the same Aspergillus, it's got a slightly different name, but only because we didn't know they were the same thing, is Aspergillus flavus.

And Aspergillus flavus is the Aspergillus that causes a toxin that can spoil our crops, spoil our, our, our grains, especially corn, get people very, very sick, and also cause human infections in the lung.

And the only difference between those two, between making really nice rice wine and causing horrible toxins in food production, is one little set of genes that's found in one and missing in the other.

Shawn, can you tell us about some of the top fungal disease threats today and where we're seeing them, if it's more like healthcare settings or community or the environment or maybe all three?

Can you give us some other examples, kind of maybe more from daily life of how we might find beneficial or harmful fungi?

Yeah, so another really interesting case.

So everyone knows sake, wine.

It's, you know, the Japanese wine.

It's made from a fungus called Aspergillus arizae.

And they use that to ferment the grain to get sake.

The same organism, the same Aspergillus, it's got a slightly different name, but only because we didn't know they were the same thing, is Aspergillus flavus.

Sean, can you tell us about some of the top fungal disease threats today and where we're seeing them, if it's more like healthcare settings or community or the environment or maybe all three?

So what are, what are some programs that you've seen that have worked well, that have been successful, that we could share with the audience?

Yeah.

So, you know, kind of the, the way we go in and, and we look at things are what is the lowest hanging fruit that we can pull in each country? Because when we go in and test, it's, it's great, or go in and train, you know, it's great if you can train people, but if there's not gonna be any continuation after we're gone, then there's not really a point in doing it.

And, and one of the most successful programs, um, that I saw was run through PEPFAR.

[laughs]

Working with one of my colleagues in, in Nigeria, who is just, she is a fanatic about building capacity across Africa.

She gets lots of money to bring in people to train.

She pays for everything, um, pays for the hotels, pays for, put these people up, pays for all the supplies.