The first in a coming array of papers looking at the co-transcriptome of 72 Botrytis genotype in 10 different host plants is out. Summary is the pathogen uses a combination of general virulence and host specific plasticity (not new genes) to infect dicots. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Combined generalist and host-specific transcriptional strategies enable host generalism in the fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea

How generalist pathogens infect phylogenetically diverse hosts remains a central question in plant-pathogen biology. In particular, the extent to which broad host range is enabled by genetic variation...

biorxiv.org

Midst of the labs Genetics publish-athon from @ccaseys.bsky.social. Infecting a population on host genotypes spread across 8 dicots we could show that a generalist pathogen has both generalist and specialist genes url:https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/doi/10.1093/genetics/iyaf079/8158657

Really neat paper out in @nature.com on an efficient way to produce doubled haploids in sunflower, thanks to the serendipitous discovery of spontaneous haploid parthenogenesis. That might be the least intelligible sentence I have ever written - great science communication Marco! tinyurl.com/yxwc2a5v

Haploid facultative parthenogenesis in sunflower sexual reproduction - Nature

Spontaneous parthenogenesis in sunflower has been used to develop a scalable doubled haploid breeding system.

nature.com

Recruitment time! You're a junior postdoc and want to discover and produce bioactive fungal metabolites that are involved in the chemical warfare between fungi and plants? Then apply here! jobs.vib.be/j/108923/pos...

Postdoctoral Researcher - VIB

OverviewThe group of Specialized Metabolism, led by Prof. Alain Goossens at the VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology, and the metabolic engineering researc

jobs.vib.be

📜 Phylogenetic and genomic mechanisms shaping glucosinolate innovation 🧑‍🔬 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social, Amanda Agosto Ramos, @spicybotrytis.bsky.social 📔 Current Opinion in Plant Biology 🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #️⃣ #PlantScience #PlantImmunity #PlantMetabolites #Glucosinolates

Phylogenetic and genomic mechanisms shaping glucosinolate innovation

Plants have created an immense diversity of specialized metabolites to optimize fitness within a complex environment. Each plant lineage has created n…

sciencedirect.com

📝 Fungal Friends Help Young Trees Thrive in Mixed Forests 🧵 https://doi.org/n249 Young spruce trees grow better with pine neighbours thanks to underground helpers. #Botany #PlantScience 🧪 #InBrief

Fantastic opportunity: 🚀 Calling early-career scientists! Apply for the 2025 ELISIR Scholar at EPFL. From outstanding PhD straight to group leader. Join an interdisciplinary research community to conduct independent research in any area of #lifesciences in Lausanne, CH 👉 go.epfl.ch/ELISIR

EPFL Life Sciences Early Independent Research Scholar (ELISIR)

From exceptional PhD directly to independent group leader

go.epfl.ch

New preprint! I always wondered: How much diversity do pathogens have within a single field? This important to assess the risk of resistance breakdown or spread of fungicide resistance . Together with colleagues from BASF we looked into this. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Zymoseptoria tritici show local differences in within-field diversity and effector variation

Zymoseptoria tritici is a cosmopolitan hemibiotrophic wheat pathogen with a high mutation rate and a mixed reproduction system, leading to challenges in traditional farming management. For successful ...

biorxiv.org

Meet the fungi that live in the sea

Meet the fungi that live in the sea

Despite being known to science for over a century thanks to a few early pioneering marine mycologists, most people have never heard of marine fungi.

dlvr.it

Cool, elegant paper. Inverted repeat transposon near EFR affects chromatin organization and gene expression to fine-tune immune responses. #MPMI #plantimmunity www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Transposon-triggered epigenetic chromatin dynamics modulate EFR-related pathogen response - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology

Here, the authors show that an inverted-repeat transposon located next to the pattern recognition receptor ELONGATION FACTOR-TU RECEPTOR (EFR)-encoding gene in Arabidopsis controls chromatin organizat...

nature.com

I feed plants to a eat-it-all fungus

samuel mehr@mehr.nz · 2y ago

I convert tax dollars to pdfs

New! @jenncoughlan.bsky.social kindly shared their MIRA NIH award with our github repo. If you have a successful grant app you're willing to share, please contribute! github.com/RILAB/statem...

GitHub - RILAB/statements: Successful Job Applications and Grants

Successful Job Applications and Grants. Contribute to RILAB/statements development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Could fungi actually cause a zombie apocalypse? https://buff.ly/49XzsrR #CuriousKids

Could fungi actually cause a zombie apocalypse?

Be very afraid – if you’re an insect.

buff.ly

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE TO ALL WHO OBSERVE! (Happy summer solstice to the rest of you.)

🌱 Tamera Taylor, Jiregna Daksa, Alexander Chen, Siobhan Brady and Dorota Kawa collaborated on a discussion of how #microbiomes offer hope against Striga in #sorghum. This study explores how soil microbes suppress this parasitic weed in Sub-Saharan crops. ▶️ bio-protocol.org/en/bpdetail?...

🍇 Dario Cantu, Mélanie Massonnet and Noé Cochetel collaborated on ways wild grape #genomics unlocks climate resilience for viticulture. Advances in pangenomics & haplotype analysis reveal traits for disease resistance, adaptability, & sustainability. ▶️ www.cell.com/trends/genet... #ClimateAdaptation

The wild side of grape genomics

With broad genetic diversity and as a source of key agronomic traits, wild grape species (Vitis spp.) are crucial to enhance viticulture’s climatic resilience and sustainability. This review discusses how recent breakthroughs in the genome assembly and analysis of wild grape species have led to discoveries on grape evolution, from wild species’ adaptation to environmental stress to grape domestication. We detail how diploid chromosome-scale genomes from wild Vitis spp. have enabled the identification of candidate disease-resistance and flower sex determination genes and the creation of the first Vitis graph-based pangenome. Finally, we explore how wild grape genomics can impact grape research and viticulture, including aspects such as data sharing, the development of functional genomics tools, and the acceleration of genetic improvement.

cell.com

Important piece by @mikegrunwald.bsky.social. Food systems convos can get polarized between “boost yields” vs “reduce env. harms” vs “change consumption patterns.” The reality, as this piece describes, is that the 🌎 needs to do it all to feed 9-10 billion people while protecting nature & climate.

Opinion | Sorry, but This Is the Future of Food (Gift Article)

Every farm, even the scenic ones with red barns and rolling hills, is a kind of environmental crime scene, an echo of whatever wilderness it once replaced.

nytimes.com

HI old friends! Finally took the leap here to say I have several open positions going in my lab at the moment (and more to come). 1) PhD studentship in collaboration with the Royal Horticultural Society (genomics) 2) Biochemistry Postdoc to understand how Starships move Check out the links below!

It's online! If you missed yesterday's Plant Physiology focus issue webinar on Root Development, don't worry, you can watch the recording here. @hhtormar.bsky.social @idane.bsky.social youtu.be/1q_Z9PI8_Is?... #PlantSci academic.oup.com/plphys/issue...

Plant Physiology Webinar: Root Development

YouTube video by Plantae

youtu.be

"Sit down and enjoy the coffee" journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Horizontal transfers between fungal Fusarium species contributed to successive outbreaks of coffee wilt disease

Outbreaks of coffee wilt disease, caused by the fungus Fusarium xylarioides, have severely impacted coffee production. By sequencing and comparing 13 historical strains spanning 60 years and multiple ...

journals.plos.org

🔬 Maeli Melotto, Brianna Fochs and, Zachariah Jaramillo explore stomata: a plant’s frontline defense against pathogens. Learn how plants & pathogens battle for survival at this critical gateway. ▶️ www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... #PlantImmunity #CropScience #PlantPathology

Our first Bluesky post contains some good news for #fungi! After a long history of being unprotected, COP16 marked a huge advancement in the conservation of fungi. 🍄🥳 Thanks to work led by our partners at Fungi Foundation, The Fungal Conservation Pledge was introduced at #COP16. bit.ly/3Vl9GHL

Why Fungi Could Get Higher Conservation Status And Why It Matters

The UK and Chile are proposing at the UN’s biodiversity conference COP16 in Colombia that fungi receive the same status to animals and plants. This could help foster and funding research.

bit.ly

What scares me about natural disasters like #earthquakes is how unreliable the notification system seems to be. Why are half of the people notified and the other half get no messages? Is it about phone brands, networks? Is it about settings on the phones? Is it about authorizing localization?

new preprint from the lab! Elli Cryan, coadvised but the inimitable @spicybotrytis.bsky.social, does a deep dive into the GA incompatibility loci in maize, finding complex haplotypes, overturning evolutionary origins, and discovering a paramutation system! A 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Molecular evolution of a reproductive barrier in maize and related species

Three cross-incompatibility loci each control a distinct reproductive barrier in domesticated maize ( Zea mays ssp. mays ) and its wild teosinte relatives. These three loci, Teosinte crossing barrier ...

biorxiv.org

bbc.com/travel/artic... 🧀 🍄‍🟫

Is the future of French cheese at stake?

Earlier this year, cheese fans panicked following the publication of new research on essential cheesemaking moulds, certain the end was nigh for beloved Brie and Camembert.

bbc.com

I have been in North America for 10 years but I don't have #thanksgiving traditions nor family to share a full meal with. However, I really love pumpkin pie. Here is how it is starting this morning. Thankful for this beautiful butternut squash

What helped during the last admin was a slack for international scholars across institutions, so that we knew pretty fast what was going on. Also exchanged names of immigration lawyers, advices, news. Made things a bit easier, removed a tiny bit of the burden and it felt less alone

Dr. Kat Napaaqtuk❄️@napaaqtuk.bsky.social · 2y ago

So, #AcademicSky, are you telling international students/other mentees not to travel after Jan 20th? I have a postdoc from China I am worried about, trying to figure out what to put into place in case she is deported. Based on this article and others: wesleyanargus.com/2024/11/18/u...

So, #AcademicSky, are you telling international students/other mentees not to travel after Jan 20th? I have a postdoc from China I am worried about, trying to figure out what to put into place in case she is deported. Based on this article and others: wesleyanargus.com/2024/11/18/u...

University Responds to Potential Immigration Challenges Under Trump Administration

Wesleyan University's twice-weekly student newspaper since 1868.

wesleyanargus.com

Cycling is 10 times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities and 100 times more fun.

Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

Active travel can help tackle the climate crisis earlier than electric vehicles – even if you swap the car for a bike for just one trip a day.

theconversation.com

🎨 In case anyone need… The NIH BioArt Source is an awesome library of *free* professionally drawn illustrations for scientific presentations or figures. Downloadable in HD. Thank you NIH for this invaluable tool 🙏! Check it out 👇 bioart.niaid.nih.gov