Microscopic morphology of Aspergillus

Medical Mycology

• Microscopic morphology of Aspergillus fumigatus showing typical columnar, uniseriate conidial heads. Conidiophores are short, smooth-walled and have conical shaped terminal vesicles, which support a single row of phialides on the upper two thirds of the vesicle.

• Microscopic morphology of Aspergillus fumigatus showing typical columnar, uniseriate conidial heads. Conidiophores are short, smooth-walled and have conical shaped terminal vesicles, which support a single row of phialides on the upper two thirds of the vesicle.

• Microscopic morphology of Aspergillus niger showing large, globose, dark brown conidial heads, which become radiate, tending to split into several loose columns with age. Conidiophores are smooth-walled, hyaline or turning dark towards the vesicle. Conidial heads are biseriate with the phialides born on brown, often septate metulae. Conidia are globose to subglobose, dark brown to black and rough-walled 

• Microscopic morphology of Aspergillus flavus. Conidial heads are typically radiate, later splitting to form loose columns, biseriate but having some heads with phialides borne directly on the vesicle. Conidiophores are hyaline and coarsely roughened, often more noticeable near the vesicle. Conidia are globose to subglobose, pale green and conspicuously echinulate. Some strains produce brownish sclerotia. 

• Microscopic morphology of Aspergillus nidulans. Conidial heads are short columnar and biseriate. Conidiophores are usually short, brownish and smooth-walled. Conidia are globose and rough-walled.

• Grocott's methenamine silver GMS stained tissue section of lung showing fungal balls of hyphae of Aspergillus fumigatus in lung tissue, note conidial heads forming in an alveolus

• Grocott's methenamine silver GMS stained tissue section of lung showing fungal balls of hyphae of Aspergillus fumigatus

• Asperilloma found at post-mortem in the lung of a child with leukemia.  Note fungus ball occupying cavity