PLEASE SHARE! New job openings in my lab @zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social. We have a broad interest into the mechanistic basis of how molecular complexes are rewired during cellular development in plants and during invasion by pathogens. 🌱🍄🔬 See details below 👇 #PlantSciJobs

Congratulations to @sheilaroitman.bsky.social, postdoctoral researcher in Detlef Weigel’s department @plantevolution.bsky.social, on receiving the Women’s Postdoctoral Career Development Award in Science from the Weizmann Institute! Her research explores how viruses shape plant microbiomes.

Career Development Award for Sheila Roitman

bio.mpg.de

📣 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 👇

📝 NEW PREPRINT It’s with an immense joy that our preprint is finally out and it’s my first first co-author paper!!! 🧬🍄 What is the diversity of 3D genome architectures in fungi? We reconstructed the 3D genome architecture of public Hi-C data from 55 fungal. Preprint: lnkd.in/enxTh2Cm

‼️Job altert🚨📢 please spread the word: We're looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join our new department "Phytopathology and Plant Protection" at @unihalle.bsky.social. www.verwaltung.uni-halle.de/DEZERN3/AUSS...

‼️Job alert📢🚨 We are recruiting a Junior Group Leader (f) in Protein Science at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, jointly hosted by the Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology and our Collaborative Research Centre CRC 1664 "Plant Proteoform Diversity – SNP2Prot."

Nearly a year after our symposium on Repeat-Induced Point (RIP) mutations, I’m happy to share the fruit of some of our discussions. The fungal RIP hypermutator mechanism has deep eukaryotic roots www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... We hope to spark interest in this underappreciated mechanism.

So proud to see this story finally out!🎉 We added new data since our previous preprint—transgenic barley plants with an engineered immune receptor that fights off two fungal pathogens at once. Short 🧵 and link to the original preprint thread on X👇 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Molecular mimicry of a pathogen virulence target by a plant immune receptor

Plants and animals respond to pathogen attack by mounting innate immune responses that require intracellular nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins. These immune receptors detect pathog...

science.org

@talbotlabtsl.bsky.social and I reviewed what we know about our favourite cereal killer and compared it to human-infecting relatives. Check it out! 👇 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Pathogenicity and virulence of the blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae

The blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae is the causal agent of the most serious disease of cultivated rice and an emerging threat to wheat production. Controlling blast diseases is therefore critical t...

tandfonline.com

📣Last week another @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social dropped: "A fungal pathogen effector that shapes host plant microbiota kills bacteria through lipoteichoic acid binding and membrane disruption" a joint effort by @nicksnelders.bsky.social & @gabriellapetti.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Many pathogens that infect wild plants are close relatives of crop pathogens. Important model systems for studying plant diseases. Check out the special issue on wild plant pathosystems published in the Philosophical Transactions B: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...

Volume 381 Issue 1951 | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B | The Royal Society

Influential themed journal issues across the life sciences.

royalsocietypublishing.org

Congratulations @estukenbrock.bsky.social 🥳🥳🥳 Well deserved!

MPI for Evolutionary Biology@mpi-evolbio.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Congratulations to Prof. Eva Stukenbrock on her appointment to the Leopoldina. Her research on fungal pathogens helps us better understand evolution and protect crops. www.evolbio.mpg.de/3882989/eva-... #EvolutionaryBiology #Leopoldina

Finally made it.... congratulations all.

bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The variable wheat stripe rust effector AvrYr7 evades Yr7 recognition through sequence and expression polymorphisms https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.09.724051v1

📢 EffectorGeneP is finally here! Stop missing small, single-exon or orphan genes from your favourite pathogen genome. Current tools only annotate 15%-78% of effector genes, EffectorGeneP finds 95% - including the large AvrSr26 family in stem rust. #Bioinformatics 📖 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🎉 📰 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

We just received funding for a 2yr postdoc position on cryoEM of fungal gpcrs. Official call will open soon. Contact me if you‘re interested!

Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf@hhu.de · 4mo ago

Der Biologe Dr. Florian Altegoer vom Institut für Mikrobiologie der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (HHU) erhält einen mit 210.000 Euro dotierten „Exploration Grant“ der Boehringer Ingelheim Stiftung (BIS).

1/8 🔥 New preprint dropped: Dynamic co-existence of bacteriophages and their hosts 🦠 in the Arabidopsis thaliana 🌱 phyllosphere Work led by the indomitable @sheilaroitman.bsky.social‬ #plantscience #microbiome #holobiont www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Thrilled to share our paper now out in Nature Plants 🎉 We developed a genome-host association (GHA) approach to study pathogen adaptation directly from field metadata by using the originating host cultivar as phenotype. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Genome–host association mapping reveals wheat pathogen genes involved in host specialization - Nature Plants

This study introduces genome–host association (GHA), leveraging natural epidemics to map the genetic landscape of host adaptation in the pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici. Applied to 832 wheat fungal stra...

nature.com

Check out our paper on the diversity of crop wild relatives in Zimbabwe! #CropWildRelatives #PlantScience #Biodiversity #Conservation #ClimateResilience #Zimbabwe www.linkedin.com/posts/dr-pat...

A national crop wild relative checklist for Zimbabwe reveals edible crop wild relative diversity of regional and global importance | Dr Patience Chatukuta

📢 Check out this checklist of crop wild relatives in Zimbabwe! 💡 Crop wild relatives are the untamed cousins of our cultivated crops. 📊 The checklist provides baseline data for crop improvement and...

linkedin.com

So diverse and yet conserved. Check out opinion paper by Leonhard Pachinger @leopach.bsky.social on antimicrobial effectors produced by fungal pathogens: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Antimicrobial effectors of plant-associated fungi: multipurpose proteins with fast-evolving surfaces and structurally conserved cores

Plants are exposed to a variety of devastating pathogens, causing significant yearly yield losses. In order to facilitate infections, plant pathogens …

sciencedirect.com

Now that it's official i've got some news! Our group has moved from @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social to @unihalle.bsky.social where I am now leading the department for phytopathology and plant protection 🍄🌾🧬

It’s time to say farewell to ERC Research Group Leader Thorsten Langner after nearly 3 years at the institute. He reflects on his time here, key milestones, and what’s next: tinyurl.com/2vce2d6k Congratulations on your new position—we wish you and your team all the best for the future!

Check out our new review on exciting advances in molecular tools for studying DNA and RNA biology of fungal pathogens! w/ Matthew Blango @femsjournals.bsky.social @trr124-funginet.bsky.social @leibniz-hki.de academic.oup.com/microlife/ar...

Advances in molecular tools for elucidating nucleic acid biology in fungal pathogens

Check out this new review highlighting advances in DNA-, RNA-, and chromatin-based technologies and how they are used to keep pace with the emerging threat

academic.oup.com

Need to annotate transposons in fungal genomes? 🧬 Good news #MycoMobilome is now live! Check it out here: doi.org/10.1093/narg... Access the sequences through our Zenodo community (you can also contribute seqs with credit), and synchronisation with @dfam.bsky.social! w/ @danielcroll.bsky.social

MycoMobilome: a community-focused non-redundant database of transposable element consensus sequences for the fungal kingdom

Abstract. Transposable elements (TEs) are found in nearly all eukaryotic genomes. Despite significant advances in the sequencing of genomes, TE resources r

doi.org

There is a week left to apply for two available positions in my lab @ipbhalle.bsky.social - PhD: ipb-halle.mhm.jobs/12-phd-posit... - Postdoc: ipb-halle.mhm.jobs/13-postdocto... Earliest start date: 01/05/2026. We are interested in plant immune receptor biochemistry and evolution. Please share!

@thaisdalsasso.bsky.social is applying new tools to address the evolution and functional diversification of secreted proteins of fungal plant pathogen. Preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Honored and over the moon to add another Chronobiology talk to the TEDx universe at Aberystwyth next week! 🌓🦟 There are still some tickets left! tedxaberystwyth.com @aberuni.bsky.social @mpi-evolbio.bsky.social @clocksevolution.bsky.social @bioclocksuk.bsky.social

📣 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... 🧵

Today is the #InternationalDayofWomenandGirlsinScience ✨ To celebrate, we’re opening registration for our workshop "Women in Evolutionary Biology II" — keynotes, research, networking, and discussions on equality & inclusion in science. 📍 Plön (Germany) | 🔗 workshops.evolbio.mpg.de/event/144/ov...

Please share! We are looking for a PhD student (4 years) starting from 01/05/2026 at @ipbhalle.bsky.social! If you are interested in plant immunity, receptor biochemistry and evolution, consider applying! Deadline 09/03/2026. Application portal: ipb-halle.mhm.jobs/10-phd-posit...

PhD position in biology (m/f/d) (1/2026)

Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (Halle) offers a PhD position in Biology

ipb-halle.mhm.jobs