ABSTRACT
Each year, fungal pathogens infect more and more plants and animals. Globally, fungal pathogens cause the death of numerous hospitalized patients and immune-deficient individuals. Specific and nonspecific detection is crucial for the first step of understanding the presence of fungal infection. Their detection often requires tedious genetic characterization that necessitates the need for cultivation, DNA isolation, sequencing and bioinformatics. This chapter provides a brief overview of emerging pathogens and the development of detection methods based on conventional and biosensor technologies. Current improvements in biotechnology and materials science will enable the development of fast, cheap, highly reproducible and easy-to-use techniques. Such improvements as assay time, sensitivity, cost and ease of use were improved for yes/no response of fungal pathogen presence. However, the current nanotechnological improvements are still far away from providing qualitative detection of fungi with desired assay time, price and ease of use.
