REVIEW article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbiotechnology
This article is part of the Research TopicMicrofungal Sources of High-Value Compounds for Pharmaceutical and Industrial ApplicationsView all articles
Fungi Between Threat and Promise: Global Perspectives on Health and Innovation
Provisionally accepted
Hao Li1
Yang Yu Yen2
Santosh Chokkakula3
Sathishkumar Kuppusamy4
Mohammed Mujahid Alam5Abdullah G. Al-Sehemi5
Xiaoxi Zhang6
Sio Mui Chong7*
Gnanaprakash Jeyaraj8*- 1Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China
- 2Pong Dermatologic and Aesthetic Clinic, Taiwan, Taiwan
- 3Chungbuk National University College of Medicine, Cheongju-si, Republic of Korea
- 4Rathinam College of Arts & Science, Coimbatore, India
- 5King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia
- 6The University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital, Shenzhen, China
- 7Shenzhen Hospital, The University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China
- 8SIMATS Deemed University Saveetha Medical College and Hospital, Chennai, India
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Fungi play a dual role as indispensable ecological engineers and as major agents of disease in humans, animals, and plants. Recent estimates highlight their substantial impact, with millions of invasive infections annually and severe agricultural losses threatening food security. At the same time, fungi underpin ecosystem services such as decomposition, soil aggregation, and carbon sequestration, while also serving as prolific sources of enzymes, metabolites, and sustainable biomaterials. Advances in single-cell and spatial omics, cryo-electron microscopy, AlphaFold-based structural predictions, and machine learning applied to biosynthetic gene clusters are transforming the study of fungal pathogenicity, symbiosis, and metabolism. These approaches are shifting fungal research from descriptive biology toward predictive, translational pipelines that connect mechanistic insights to drug discovery, resistance management, and biotechnological innovation. Nevertheless, challenges remain, including antifungal resistance, climate-driven emergence of new pathogens, limited therapeutic options, and bottlenecks in scaling fungal applications for sustainability. Addressing these requires integrated One Health strategies that bridge clinical, agricultural, and environmental perspectives. By uniting structural biology, omics, genome editing, and computational tools within a global framework, fungal biology can be harnessed not only to mitigate emerging risks but also to drive innovations in medicine, agriculture, and green technologies.
Keywords: antifungal resistance, Biotechnology, Climate resilience, Fungal pathogenicity, One Health
Received: 12 Nov 2025; Accepted: 12 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Li, Yen, Chokkakula, Kuppusamy, Alam, Al-Sehemi, Zhang, Chong and Jeyaraj. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Sio Mui Chong
Gnanaprakash Jeyaraj
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.