Fungi are essential for life on our planet and play central roles in processes like industry, agriculture and medicine. Yet few people are aware of the importance and impact that these organisms have for human life and the environment. Fungi are our food and fermentate the bread we eat, and the wine and beer we drink. Fungi are producers of medical drugs, industrial enzymes and recombinant proteins, and among the leading producers of bioethanol and biodiesel. Fungi are bioremediators and bug killers and balance ecosystems as major recyclers of organic matter. Fungi can cause major diseases in humans, animals, and plants. Fungi can do all of this, in part because of their high resilience, being able to inhabit hostile environments, such as the interior of a mammalian organism, and to deal with many types of stress, including oxidative stress, high temperature, UV radiation, dryness, nutrient deprivation, osmotic stress, and the presence of toxic compounds. Such ability to respond to, survive in, and transform the environment, lead us to try to understand the biochemical and molecular mechanisms by which fungi are so plastic in their ability to adapt to stress. For beneficial fungi, resistance to stress is what we seek. To damage fungi, their resistance to the stresses must be overcome. Therefore, knowing the mechanisms of stress adaptation in fungi can broaden the possibilities of intervention to modulate their ability to adapt to specific environments in the interest of society.

This meeting will feature talks from scientists from several countries who work on all these topics at the frontier of the research in fungi, including ecology and environment, health, sustainability, agriculture, industry, technology, molecular and cellular biology, biochemistry and industrial processes. This event will be a unique opportunity to discuss with the most renowned scientists in these fields.

Based on the great success of the first (Rangel et al. 2015), second (Alder-Rangel et al. 2018), and third ISFUS (Alder-Rangel et al. 2020, Rangel and Alder-Rangel, 2020), the IV ISFUS will be a joint meeting, together with the XIII International Fungal Biology Conference (IFBC) at the Hotel Nacional Inn in São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil. This will increase the visibility of both meetings and attract more participants from all over the world.

The International Fungal Biology Conference started in 1965 in Bristol, UK and since then has been held in Provo (Utah, USA 1973), Gwatt (Switzerland 1980), Stirling (Scotland 1987), Helen (Georgia, USA 1991), Konstanz (Germany 1996), Groningen (The Netherlands 1999), Guanajuato (Mexico, 2009; https://funguscongress.ucr.edu), Nancy (France 2006), Ensenada (Mexico 2009), Karlsruhe (Germany 2013; http://www.iab.kit.edu/conference/index.php), Incheon Songdo, (South Korea 2017), and now in São José dos Campos (Brazil, 2021). This Conference series is focused on exciting new fields at the frontiers of Fungal Cell Biology. Both ISFUS and IFBC are designed to provide a great environment to promote scientific and social interactions. It is expected that all participants attend every talk and therefore, no concurrent sessions are held. Poster sessions are always very lively at these meetings and reach a similar audience as oral presentations in other meetings.

We are confident that a joint ISFUS-IFBC meeting will bring together complementary and exciting frontier fields of fungal biology that should be attractive to many young researchers and students in this field, from all over the world.

IV ISFUS Main Topics

1. Stress mechanisms and responses in fungi
2. Fungal photobiology, clock regulation, and stress
3. Fungal stress in industry
4. Fungal biology in extreme environments
5. Ionizing radiation, ultraviolet radiation, heat, and other stresses in fungal biology
6. Fungal stress in agriculture
7. Stress in fungal pathogenesis
8. Stress in populations, fungal communities, and symbiotic interactions

XIII IFBC Main Topics

1. Morphogenes: Includes polar growth, regulation of branching, asexual and sexual reproduction and germination in both yeast and filamentous fungi
2. Organellar dynamics: Includes secretion, vesicle trafficking, nuclear dynamics, vacuolar morphogenesis, mitochondrial interactions, cellular heterogeneity
3. Cytoskeletal function and dynamics: Includes aspects of cytoskeleton and growth, cell wall synthesis and septation mechanisms, nuclear division, trafficking, etc.
4. Cell biology of interactions and communication: Includes fungal-fungal interactions, fungal-bacterial, fungal-plant, fungal-animal focused on cell biological aspects.