“Can C. albicans play football?” – An insight into the world of biochemistry students

Whilst sitting around in a classroom the other day, one of my fellow students, mused “Candida albicans sounds like it could be the name of a football team”.

The discussion turned into a conversation about the practicalities of getting yeast to play football (soccer to any Americans in the room). However, I pointed out that C. albicans do not have legs, so it could never be called “football”. A bright spark pointed out that the game could still work if they played with hyphae.

As for the ball, someone cleverly suggested using a buckyball. We all found this too amusing to quibble about the size problems (a buckyball is about 10 Angstroms – something like 10,000 times smaller than an average-large yeast cell).

As for getting the yeast to play along, it was suggested some sort of chemoattractant was applied to the buckyball. However, fears were raised that the yeast may try and eat the ball as opposed to scoring a goal with it.

Of course, if Candida albicans were to play professionally, they would simply immobilize their opponents by causing acute candidiasis, thus placing them at the top of the League.

I apologise to any of my fellow students who stumble across this and feel RAGE

that they are not credited using proper scientific referencing convention.

However, I felt it prudent not to identify anyone by name!