📣 New preprint! 🧵 Fantastic work led by @antonkraege.bsky.social Fact: Cerato-platanins are everywhere in fungi. Found across the fungal kingdom, implicated in everything from development to virulence to immune activation. But what do they *actually* do? We finally found the answer 👇

Thanks to everyone who organized the great event and selected me for a Margalith Galun Award! Congratulations to the other winners. Already looking forward to following up on all the new connections and ideas #IAL10

It’s a wrap! What an inspiring #IAL10 full of amazing talks, lively discussions, and wonderful people to meet. Heading back to Germany with lots of fresh ideas to explore in my favourite Peltigera lichens. Proud to have represented @mibinet.bsky.social at IAL together with @ciarankelly.bsky.social

@metalichen.bsky.social Congratulations on your award, I can for sure agree that I have also been inspired by your work on lichens! 🥳

It was very nice to present some of our work on antimicrobial proteins in lichens at the IAL10! Stop by at my poster number 4 today or tomorrow afternoon for further discussion #IAL10

1/8 What if the genomic features we associate with fungal pathogens were also used by mutualists? We assembled 41 scale lichen genomes across 11 Peltigera species with 30 chromosome scale and 5 T2T revealing an unexpected genomic toolkit behind lichen symbiosis. doi.org/10.64898/202... #lichen

A chromosome-scale super-pangenome of the lichen genus Peltigera reveals genome architecture and expanded interaction repertoires shared across pathogenic and mutualistic fungi

Fungi engage in associations with other organisms across a continuum from pathogenic to mutualistic lifestyles. Hence, they require a compendium of molecular capacities, including partner recognition,...

doi.org

Thoroughly enjoyed this collaboration with @usadellab.bsky.social & @faltegoer.bsky.social groups in the @mibinet.bsky.social framework to characterize Peltigera lichen symbioses with major contributions from @ciarankelly.bsky.social & @yukiyosato.bsky.social

Björn Usadel@usadellab.bsky.social · last mo.

1/8 What if the genomic features we associate with fungal pathogens were also used by mutualists? We assembled 41 scale lichen genomes across 11 Peltigera species with 30 chromosome scale and 5 T2T revealing an unexpected genomic toolkit behind lichen symbiosis. doi.org/10.64898/202... #lichen

Very happy to share results from the first year of my PhD: we found that the model alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii engages in a mutualistic interaction with Verticillium fungi. With @hroevenich.bsky.social and Urs. Graphical abstract: 🟢 + 🍄= 💚 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

📣 New preprint on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social: Bacteria rewire fungal antimicrobial gene expression in microbial arms races www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... This work, led by outstanding @jinyi-zhu.bsky.social, shows that bacteria suppress fungal antimicrobial protein expression to evade antagonism

🎉 📰 Very happy to share the journal publication of our manuscript "Plant-associated fungi co-opt ancient antimicrobials for host manipulation"! #ScienceAdvancesResearch @science.org @teamthomma.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Plant-associated fungi co-opt ancient antimicrobials for host manipulation

Fungal effectors may have evolved from ancient antimicrobials, shaping plant microbiota and immunity during infection.

science.org

🍂🌱 An international research team led by @teamthomma.bsky.social has discovered the surprising evolutionary origin of fungal effector proteins: molecules that pathogens use today to infect their hosts appear to have evolved from ancient antimicrobial proteins. More: ➡️ uni.koeln/UCMWQ #UniCologne

Fungi utilize ancient antimicrobial proteins to attack hosts and their microbiomes

A team of plant researchers at the University of Cologne decodes a key infection strategy of fungal pathogens. Significant findings for disease control, plant protection and food security as well as f...

uni.koeln

Happy to share the third chapter of my postdoctoral adventure at @mpipz.bsky.social ➡️doi.org/10.64898/2026.04.20.719616 We used C. chenopodiifolia's ability to produce explosive aerial fruit and non-explosive underground fruit to identify REVOLUTA's role in cell fate and wall patterning🌿💥 ⬇️🧵

Congratulations to @ciarankelly.bsky.social for winning a prize for his poster on his @mibinet.bsky.social project describing lichen antimicrobial proteins at the @vaam-microbes.bsky.social annual conference in Berlin!

Can't attend #ECFG17 this year, but watch out this afternoon CS 2.1 Plant pathogenic fungi (The Liffey B) at 16:30 by @wolki95.bsky.social: Undermining the “cry for help”: how a fungus secretes an antimicrobial to undermine host recruitment of antagonists

And tomorrow, Wednesday, in CS 3.5 Symbionts and endophytes (Liffey Meeting Room 3) at 15:30 by @ciarankelly.bsky.social: Understanding the role of antimicrobial effector proteins secreted by the lichen-forming fungus Peltigera rufescens

Honoured to have contributed to this work by Andreas Keppler and the Vorholt lab 🦠🌱

Plant microbiota feedbacks through dose-responsive expression of general non-self response genes

Nature Plants - The plant general non-self response system is triggered by leaf microbiota members and, in turn, impacts their colonization.

nature.com