Biodiversity of Fungi: Their Role in Human Life

Biodiversity of Fungi: Their Role in Human Life covers different aspects of fungal diversity, fungal phylogeny, fungi from little-explored and extreme habitals, endophytes in tropical forests, their diversity and ecology, and biodiversity and molecular aspects of halophilic fungi.  Exploitation of filamentous fungi for the degradation of organopollutanis by ligninolytic basidiomycetes, etomychorrizal fungi, aquatic fungi and other fungi along with the keratinophilic fungi from birds and degradation of bird feathers by these fungi are also included.  The use of filamentous fungi as edible crops, in health care, particularly cancer and immunodeficiency states and the biotechnology of Neosartorya and Phoma also form part of the book.  Evolution of fungal diseases of ornamental crops and exploitation of fungi for organic dyes contributes to unusual aspects of fungal metabolism.  The chapters also cover the Universally Primed PCR (UP-PCR) and fungal protoplast technology with their possible applications in the development of new anti-fungal targets.  Biodiversity of fungi will add substantially to the knowledge of fungal diversity and its applications in specific areas.  The book will be useful to students, teachers, research scientists in agriculture and industry, working in the field of mycology.