A fungus called Cryptococcus gattii is causing
untold misery to lot of patients in Southern California. This has been going on
for years. No one had a clue to where it came from. The suspects were trees.
Elan Filler, a 7th grader was looking for a science
fair project. Her dad Dr. Scott Filler who is an infectious disease specialist
at the University of California ran in to Springer's advisor Dr Heitman at a
conference, and told him about Elan and her project. Dr Heitman took it up with
Springer. Soon Elan was swabbing tree trunks and growing out the fungus in
Petri dishes as per plans chalked out. Springer analyzed the genetic
fingerprints of fungi in the samples. To the delight of scientists C. gattii
from three trees, Canary Island pine, New Zealand pohutukawa and American sweet
gum, matched almost exactly with C. gattii from infected patients.
Details are published in the latest issue of PLOS Pathogens.
Elan Filler has been named as an author on the study
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