Photonics of fungal cell wall

Abstract

The cell wall serves as a mechanical protection for the fungi and controls the traffic of molecules entering the cell. However, the optical role of the cell wall has not been fully investigated. In this work, we use a computational simulation to evaluate the optical response of the fungal cell wall. The main advantage of this approach is that the scattering structure can be introduced within the simulation via transmission electronic microscope (TEM) images of its cross section which in this case correspond to real fungal cell walls. The obtained results indicate that the reflectivity of the fungal cell wall depends on the incident wavelength, and then, it modulates the light that reaches the interior of the cell. This suggests that the light stimulus that reaches the inner part of the cell could depend on the structural characteristics of the cell wall. Additionally, regarding the analysis of color, our finding opens up a new and interesting approach to investigate the ecological role of UV light in relation to fungal organisms and their microhabitat.