Question

Fungal diseases in humans can be difficult to treat in part because the drugs used can also cause damage to human cells. Use the phylogeny above to explain why this is so and be sure to include tree-thinking as part of your answer.

Answer 1

Fungal diseases in humans can be difficult to treat due to their similarity to human cells and the challenge of developing drugs that target fungi without harming human cells.

Step-by-step explanation:

Fungal diseases in humans can be difficult to treat because the drugs used can also cause damage to human cells. This is due to the fact that fungi are eukaryotes, similar to human cells. As a result, it is challenging to develop drugs that specifically target fungi without harming human cells.

Tree-thinking, which involves considering the evolutionary relationships between organisms, can help explain why fungal diseases are difficult to treat. By analyzing the phylogeny of different organisms, we can see that fungi are more closely related to humans than bacteria, which are prokaryotes. This close evolutionary relationship means that drugs that target fungi may also harm human cells.