**7. Textile**

Textile is defined as elastic material produced by spinning of natural or synthetic raw fibers and which are in final form composed of interlocked network of threads or yarns. Apart from synthetic fibers, materials used for textile production could be of plant or animal origin. Cotton, linen, hemp and jute are widely used fabrics of plant origin and hence they are composed of cellulose fibers. Many old-fashioned and vintage attires and garments, worn by our ancestors were woven from these fabrics and deposited in museum depots and exhibition rooms, or still worn during traditional festivities. In that sense, those fibers could be easily attacked by cellulolytic fungi, and mechanisms of biodeterioration are similar to those of the fungi capable of degrading paper-based materials. On the other hand, animal fibers include wool and silk [92]. Wool is a textile fiber obtained from various hairy mammals, but mostly from sheep, and main constituent of wool is a protein keratin. When compared with textile fibers of plant origin, wool is more resistant to fungal attack due to its specific cross-linked structure with disulphide bonds [93]. However, fungi capable for keratinolysis can attack wool fibers and cause wool degradation. Pioneer research by some authors demonstrated that fungi are the main "culprits" responsible for wool degradation, in much higher degree then bacteria, and members of genera *Aspergillus*, *Chaetomium*, *Fusarium*, *Microsporum*, *Penicillium*, *Rhizopus* and *Trichophyton* are among the most frequent wool colonizers [94]. In an *in vitro* study, other investigators showed that fungi do not grow directly on the wool fibers but rather between the fibers, and reported that proteolytic fungi *Cladosporium cladosporioides* and *Penicillium corylophilum* have the most intensive growth when inoculated on wool and also the highest impact on degradation and aging of wool fibers [93]. Although wool is very resilient to microbial attack, the silk is considered to be a natural fiber most resistant to the biodeterioration [92]. Silks are defined as fibrous proteins spun into fibers through activity of spiders and insects. The main producer of commercial silk is a domestic silkworm *Bombyx mori*. Chemically, raw silks are composed of highly crystalline polypeptide fibers, fibroin, linked to one another by a gum-like protein, sericin [95]. The amino acid composition of silk polypeptides results in a very stable β-pleated crystal structure, making fibroin totally insoluble in aqueous solvents and hence very resistant to enzymatic hydrolysis [96]. In that sense, scientific reports regarding the microbial deterioration of silk material are scarce. Still, some authors reported for the first time the mechanical deterioration of Japanese silk from Serbian museum collections caused by proteolytic fungus *Chaetomium globosum*. Scanning electron microscopy analysis of the analyzed scroll indicated that *C. globosum* hyphae are capable of the mechanical deterioration of silk, causing cracks and gaps in fibroin fibers and consequently lead to visible impairment of silk artifact itself (**Figure 1A** and **B**) [97].
