Evolution of supernumerary chromosomes in wheat blast fungal pathogens https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.01.729302v1

Free and open-source images, icons, and tools for creating scientific illustrations doi.org/10.59350/5zt... 🧪

Free and open-source images, icons, and tools for creating scientific illustrations

Phylopic, NIH Bioart, Bioicons, Scidraw, Open Science Art, Health Icons, Servier Medical Art, Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Noun Project, Segment Anything, Excalidraw, draw.io, Biographics

doi.org

Where do plant pathogen effectors come from? @mesny.bsky.social shows how fungi turned shield 🛡️ into sword ⚔️ to end up with dual-function molecules to disrupt host immunity & protective host microbiota. @ceplas.bsky.social @mibinet.bsky.social @madfungi.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

What’s cooler than being cool? No dry ice. We’ve teamed up with Genovis to develop SEQguard™ Dino Preserve, a thermostable RNA protection solution for Plasmidsaurus RNA-Seq. Now you can ship purified RNA at room temp. No ice. No stress. Just fast, reliable RNA-seq. plasmidsaurus.com/news/skip-th...

The work is summarised in a Research Briefing accompanying the article here: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... In a nutshell, brown algae lost DNAme, H3K9me and H3K27me3 early in evolution but repurposed H3K79me (an active mark in animals and yeast) as a repressive histone mark. Seaweeds FTW!!! 🪸

Loss of canonical epigenetic silencing reveals distinct chromatin evolution in brown algae - Nature Ecology & Evolution

Brown algae independently evolved complex multicellularity with an atypical chromatin toolkit, including early loss of DNA methylation and PRC2-mediated gene silencing. By profiling histone modificati...

nature.com

a great talk by Dr.Doudna this afternoon at Duke

Some reflections on #Fungal26 This was a great meeting as always but set against some turbulent times of course, which meant many regular attendees were not present. This thread is mainly for them. However, the proportion of first-time attendees was very high and very international. #Fungal26 1/15

🥳 Happy that our manuscript, first published on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social has been accepted for publication in "Microbiome" and will be part of a collection on "Harnessing plant microbiomes to improve performance and mechanistic understanding" link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Differential contributions of an antimicrobial effector from Verticillium dahliae to virulence and tomato microbiota assembly across natural soils - Microbiome

Background Throughout their life cycle, plants associate with diverse and complex microbial communities collectively known as their microbiota. These microbiota contribute to plant performance and hea...

link.springer.com

Team Thomma@teamthomma.bsky.social · 10mo ago

📣 New @biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social preprint, another joint-venture of @wolki95.bsky.social & @antonkraege.bsky.social, co-directed by @nicksnelders.bsky.social. Here’s a 🧵

Our paper is finally out in PLOS Genetics! Glad to share this work exploring new functions of the Sxi1/Sxi2 homeodomain proteins in Cryptococcus deneoformans. dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

Homeodomain protein Sxi1α independently controls cell-cell fusion and gene expression during sexual reproduction in Cryptococcus deneoformans

Author summary Analogous to processes observed in many eukaryotic organisms, fungal sexual reproduction reshuffles genetic material, producing novel genetic variants with increased fitness and/or adap...

dx.plos.org

"Nobody will care about your work about sugar metabolism and transporters in Neurospora crassa" Nobody can predict what can happen with your work. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Fungal-derived cellobiose metabolic pathway fuels T cells to bypass intratumoral glucose competition

Solid tumors harbor immunosuppressive microenvironments that inhibit tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) through the voracious consumption of glucos…

sciencedirect.com

📣 12 open postdoc positions in @ceplas.bsky.social !! www.ceplas.eu/en/training-... We @teamthomma.bsky.social look for a postdoc on The Secret Lives of Soil-Borne Fungal Pathogens: Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Intermicrobial Interactions in Soils (see project 4)

📣 Our latest story just dropped on bioRxiv:: A structurally unique effector shared between Verticillium dahliae and Fusarium oxysporum is involved in cotton defoliation and virulence on other hosts www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵

#Antifungal resistance is a global threat, but epigenetic mechanisms drive rapid, reversible adaptation in fungi. This study shows that #RNAi or #heterochromatin driven #epimutations transiently silence the gene fkbA to confer FK506 #tacrolimus resistance in #Mucor @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4qdttWc

Distinct modes of sequence evolution and epigenetic modifications underpin the origins of Starship-mediated variation in Pyricularia fungal plant pathogens https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.28.702382v1

Sharing our lab’s first publication! Probing clinical isolates of Cryptococcus, a disease-causing fungus of the lungs and brain, we found multiple heat-mobile elements that ‘jump’ in the genome at body temperature (!) with the ability to drive adaptive changes. journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

Absolutely delighted that our paper on epigenetic dynamics during plant aging is out today in Science! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Aging drives a program of DNA methylation decay in plant organs

Plants display a wide range of life spans and aging rates. Although dynamic changes to DNA methylation are a hallmark of aging in mammals, it is unclear whether similar molecular signatures reflect ra...

science.org

Excited to share our new preprint in collaboration with @kellerlab.bsky.social! We identified unstable aneuploidy in Aspergillus fumigatus and explore how aneuploidy-mediated transcriptional and metabolic changes influence antifungal resistance. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Whole-chromosome duplications drive antimicrobial resistance in Aspergillus fumigatus

Aneuploidy causes genome plasticity and enables adaptive responses that confer drug resistance in eukaryotes ranging from fungal pathogens to human cancer cells. Aspergillus fumigatus is a soil-reside...

biorxiv.org

Kicked off a series on #Drosophila TE discovery and naming. The first post covers elements that predate the term "mobile element", and more. artemilin.dev/posts/te_nam...

📣 Massively proud of this ⬇️ great study, led by the brilliant @mesny.bsky.social surprisingly uncovering that many pathogen effectors stem from ancient antimicrobials 🤯 #EffectorWisdom #EvoMPMI

Fantin Mesny@mesny.bsky.social · 12mo ago

📣 NEW PREPRINT 📝 We identified evolutionary origins of many fungal effectors! We show that fungi secrete lots of antimicrobial proteins, and that some of them were repurposed by plant pathogens for host immune suppression. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... cc @teamthomma.bsky.social

#NewResearch A mycovirus infecting the pathogenic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus enhances its stress tolerance and virulence in mice. @shlezingerlab.bsky.social #Mycoviruses #FungalPathogenesis #Aspergillus #MicroSky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Aspergillus fumigatus dsRNA virus promotes fungal fitness and pathogenicity in the mammalian host - Nature Microbiology

A mycovirus infecting the pathogenic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus enhances its stress tolerance and virulence in mice.

nature.com

Last week I requested a tech and a postdoc position to be created and submitted the ads for those positions. Stay tuned for the official ad. For inquiries, my contact can be found here: cxli233.github.io/cxLi_lab/

In today's issue of Cell-->if you are looking for a good distraction from the news (who isn't), check it out! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Phenotypic landscape of an invasive fungal pathogen reveals its unique biology

The construction and high-precision fitness profiling of a C. neoformans knockout library reveals a high-resolution functional map of its genome and allowed for the identification of fungal analogs of...

cell.com

📣 Happy to see the journal publication 📄 of our work on Starships 🚀 in Verticillium fungi: terrific work led by @yukiyosato.bsky.social rdcu.be/exBSp

Starship giant transposons dominate plastic genomic regions in a fungal plant pathogen and drive virulence evolution

Nature Communications - Giant transposons, known as ‘Starships’, mediate horizontal gene transfer between fungal genomes. Here, Sato et al. show that Starships occupy genome regions...

rdcu.be

We dive into the dynamics of #starships 🚀 in a fungal pathogen to ask: how might these giant #transposons impact human health? We find they drive genome-wide variation, encode clinically-relevant traits and even transpose within the same strain! 🍄🧪 out today in mBio #goteam doi.org/10.1128/mbio...

Giant transposons promote strain heterogeneity in a major fungal pathogen | mBio

No “one size fits all” option exists for treating fungal infections in large part due to genetic and phenotypic variability among strains. Accounting for strain heterogeneity is thus fundamental for d...

doi.org

Just published! Barbara Valent honors H. H. Flor by exploring how rice blast fungus evades plant resistance via AVR gene changes—driving boom–bust cycles—and warns of rising wheat and ryegrass blast threats from similar shifts and crossbreeding. Read the article: doi.org/10.1094/MPMI...

We would love feedback on a new NCBI-BLAST service we are launching today: sky-blast.com Under the hood it's the same BLAST executable and databases provided by NCBI, with a replica of the NIH's interface - providing an alternative to the US gov service that's less congested, faster & more reliable

We did it! We caught Starship #transposons moving between #fungal species in the lab, including between species separated by ~100my. We think Starships are a mediator of HGT in fungi, akin to conjugative elements in bacteria. Check out the preprint. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Its out.... Plant pathogenic fungi hijack phosphate signaling with conserved enzymatic effectors | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... A wonderful collaboration with the Schaffrath @rwth.bsky.social and Oliveira-Garcia groups! Huge credit to Carl Mcombe and Alex Wegner.

Plant pathogenic fungi hijack phosphate signaling with conserved enzymatic effectors

Inorganic phosphate (Pi) is essential for life, and plant cells monitor Pi availability by sensing inositol pyrophosphate (PP-InsP) levels. In this work, we describe the hijacking of plant phosphate s...

science.org

Given the discussion today. #EthicalPublishing is possible. Our ethos for many years now: 1. All papers preprinted along with data. 2. No commercial publishers. 3. Only publish in scientific society journals and with reputable non-profit publishers. 4. Collaborators do what they want.

Sophien Kamoun@kamounlab.bsky.social · last yr.

Society journals vs. #NatureRipoffs @manavellalab @ASPB @NaturePlants

Excited to share my latest paper on the role of calcineurin in cytokinesis in a critical human pathogen. It started with a genetic screen to identify mutants that can provide resistance to calcineurin inhibitors, which took us to a very unexpected place. A short 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...