Key learning points

1. Some, but not all, fungi are pathogens that can cause communicable diseases in humans.
2. Athlete’s foot as an example of a fungal disease, how it is spread, and how the spread can be reduced.
3. Protists are eukaryotic microorganisms.
4. Malaria as an example of a disease caused by a protist, spread by an insect vector, and how the spread can be reduced.
5. The interaction of sickle-cell trait and malaria as an example of interaction between different types of disease.

Keywords

• Fungi - eukaryotic kingdom of microorganisms including yeast and mould

• Protists - eukaryotic kingdom of microorganisms including amoeba and plasmodium

• Vector - an organism that carries the pathogen from the host to another organism

• Allele - a genetic variant in a gene creates an allele (a different version of a gene), which can produce a different phenotype

Common misconception