BioInteractive Surfaces for Assessing Fungal Growth and Development Hoch, Turner, Craighead, Ober

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Bio-Interactive Surfaces for Assessing Fungal
Growth and DevelopmentHoch, Turner, Craighead,
Ober

• Objectives
• To use microfabricated surfaces to study how
  plant pathogenic fungi sense substrata to
  initiate infection structure formation

• Approach
• Fabricate surfaces with controlled surface area,
  but with underlying sub-surface volume
  controllable
• Use pillared surfaces and precisely arranged
  pored surfaces
• Accomplishments
• Using pillared surfaces, demonstrated that cells
  needed at least 4.5 mm of surface contact for
  induction of appressoria.
• No appressoria formed on 1.4 -3.5 mm wide pillars
  
• Developed T-pillar surfaces to vary sub-surface
  volume while keeping surface contact area and
  depth of pillar constant

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