Preparation of Isolates

We used two strains of T. rubrum for experiments. A clinical isolate of T. rubrum was provided by the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Guangdong, China. Another T. rubrum strain, ATCC4438, was obtained from the ATCC (American type culture collection). Sabouraud dextrose agar (SDA) plates were separately inoculated with each strain and incubated for 7 days at 28°C; following the incubation period, spores were collected by brushing the culture surface with 3 ml of phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) using a sterile glass rod. The resulting spore suspension was filtered through a 40-μM filter (Biologix Group Limited). The microconidia were counted using a hemocytometer at fifty thousand microconidia per ml and incubated at 28°C in growth medium consisting of polypeptone (10 g) and glucose (40 g) in water (1000 ml). Colonies of both strains were used for this experiment as follows: (I) Two individual aliquots (10 μl each) of the T. rubrum spore suspension were pipetted onto two separate areas of new SDA plates (two colonies per plate) before IPL irradiation, and (II) the spore suspensions were cultured in 96-well flat-bottomed microdilution plates (100 μL per well, 3 wells per group) for IPL irradiation.