K11

Infectious-disease experiments test how pathogens interact with host barriers, innate immune receptors, inflammatory signaling, pathogen replication, and tissue injury; pattern-recognition receptors such as TLRs, RIG-I-like receptors, NOD-like receptors, and inflammasomes detect microbial molecules and activate NF-κB, interferon, and cytokine responses. The central hypothesis is that infection severity reflects the balance between pathogen burden and host response: protective inflammation restricts pathogen growth, whereas excessive or mislocalized inflammation contributes to tissue damage and disease phenotype. Unresolved questions include which host pathways are protective versus pathogenic, why some infection models fail to translate to human disease, and which combined readouts best predict clinically relevant infection outcomes.

Fungal biofilm culture is an in vitro method for growing surface-attached fungal communities, most commonly Candida albicans, on abiotic substrates such as polystyrene wells, silicone elastomer, or polymethylmethacrylate; the assay models adhesion, proliferation, filamentation, extracellular-matrix-associated maturation, and dispersion. Biofilm output can be read by optical density at 600 nm for adherent biomass, XTT reduction for metabolic activity, CFU recovery for viable attached or dispersed cells, and microscopy for architecture.