Western Carolina University 1 article published in JoVE Immunology and Infection Biolistic Transformation of a Fluorescent Tagged Gene into the Opportunistic Fungal Pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans Tonya Taylor1, Indrani Bose2, Taylor Luckie1, Kerry Smith1 1Department of Genetics and Biochemistry, Eukaryotic Pathogens Innovation Center (EPIC), Clemson University, 2Department of Biology, Western Carolina University Biolistic transformation is a method used to generate stable integration of DNA into the genome of the opportunistic pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans through homologous recombination. We will demonstrate biolistic transformation of a construct, which has the gene encoding acetate kinase fused to the fluorescent tag mCherry into C. neoformans.