  The cell wall serves as a mechanical protection for the fungi and controls
the traffic of molecules entering the cell. However, the optical role of the
cell wall has not been fully investigated. In this work, we use a computational
simulation to evaluate the optical response of the fungal cell wall. The main
advantage of this approach is that the scattering structure can be introduced
within the simulation via transmission electronic microscope (TEM) images of
its cross section which in this case correspond to real fungal cell walls. The
obtained results indicate that the reflectivity of the fungal cell wall depends
on the incident wavelength, and then, it modulates the light that reaches the
interior of the cell. This suggests that the light stimulus that reaches the
inner part of the cell could depend on the structural characteristics of the
cell wall. Additionally, regarding the analysis of color, our finding opens up
a new and interesting approach to investigate the ecological role of UV light
in relation to fungal organisms and their microhabitat.
