QUESTION OF THE WEEK?

BIOBASICS QUESTION OF THE WEEK?

What is DANDRUFF & how is it formed?
A fungus is at least partly to blame for the presence of Dandruff on your scalp. Dandruff is related to the presence of certain species of Malassezia—ubiquitous, hard-to-eradicate fungi that live on humans and other mammals.

Malassezia live on your scalp--whether or not you have dandruff—and dine on the oil that your scalp excretes, the researchers say. The fungi break down the oil, called sebum, into free fatty acids, which can irritate the scalp. Irritation prompts the scalp to try to repair itself through extra cell production, which leads to dandruff. The repair also stimulates more sebum secretion, which means more fungi food.
Researchers don't know why only some people get dandruff. Everybody has got Malassezia and everybody has got sebum... but for some reason some people get dandruff and other people don't.

The M. globosa genome has revealed a few interesting facts. First, the fungus lacks the gene that produces lipids. M. globosa can't make fats itself which explains why it is dependent on our sebum.
Another key finding--with implications for the fight against dandruff--is what the fungus uses to break down the sebum. The researchers found that M. globosa secretes several types of proteins—lipases and proteases—that can break up sebum into something the fungus can digest. Inhibition of these lipases would probably be a good thing for starving out the bug. Inhibition of proteases would be a good way to kill the bug.