I love it when you talk that way, Rafal! J
Mark From: rafal kedzierski [mailto:rafal...@hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2012 12:20 PM To: texas cavers tc Subject: [Texascavers] WNS syndrome news dissection Delving further into the PNAS article claiming that N. American and European WNS is the same. Just because American bats infected with N. American and European fungus showed similar symptoms does not mean that these are the exact same Geomyces destructans, which I think the article was implying. I think the importance may be for proving the Kochs postulates of Geomyces destructans in white nose syndrome (implying that fungus is causative of the disease). There is this amazing thing called 'molecular biology' that actually lets you look at the genomic structure and determine its similarity to other pathogens, and trace its genetic drift. >From Pubmed, there is an article from 2011 that shows clonal genotype of US isolates is similar, imlpying clonal dispersion of fungus in North America (Emerg Infect Dis, 2011, July 17(7): 1273-6). However, I'm not aware of any papers showing molecular match between N. American or European Geomyces destructans. Rafal Kedzierski
