oai:www.db-thueringen.de:dbt_mods_00055686In this work I contributed to the elucidation of the role and physiological meaning of extracellular vesicles (EVs) released from epithelial cells and neutrophils after interaction with the pathogenic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus. With my work I untangled more aspects of the interaction between neutrophils and this fungus and came to the finding that EVs generated from neutrophils infected with A. fumigatus are highly specific in the killing of A. fumigatus. Evaluation of the hyphal damage induced by EVs was performed with extensive imaging, based on confocal laser scanning microscopy, bioinformatic 3D reconstruction and quantification of signals, and a metabolic assay. In the course of my research on extracellular vesicles I also characterized EVs from epithelial cells. I evaluated the cell response after confrontation with different conidia morphotypes of A. fumigatus. Analysing the EVs after these different co-incubations revealed that their protein and cytokine contents are changed. This proves that the cells can sense different stimuli and modify their EV content
