Nick Talbot

Here is an example of GFP-CARa localization at the extrahaustorial membrane that did not make it into the manuscript but still is nice.

Are you interested in using synthetic approaches to promote arbuscular mycorrhiza symbiosis? Then our PostDoc position may be for you: jobs.mpimp-golm.mpg.de/jobposting/b...

Extensive horizontal transfer of transposable elements shapes fungal mobilomes Romeijn et al. reveal that horizontal transposon transfer is widespread in fungi, contributing up to 70% of transposon content in some taxa. The authors uncover thousands of events across diverse line...

Extensive horizontal transfer of transposable elements shapes fungal mobilomes

@currentbiology.bsky.social by @jromeijn.bsky.social et al from @mfseidl.bsky.social

www.cell.com/current-biol...

@talbotlabtsl.bsky.social giving our annual Blackman Lecture today. An incredible career investigating the biology of rice blast fungus

I remember this very well circulating when I was a postdoc.

Honoured to give the Blackman Lecture today @ox.ac.uk and see the fantastic new Life and Mind Building.

Congratulations Camille! @puginiercamille.bsky.social - well deserved !

CC-NLRs exhibit diverse conformations in the resting state. Figure depicts different NLR resting and activated states. While ZAR1 exists as a monomer bound to its guardees in its resting state, several forms have been observed for the NRC2 helper, including dimers, tetramers, and filaments. While filament-like structures were observed via confocal microscopy for NRC2 upon overexpression in planta, these structures were not detected for its paralog NRC4, suggesting a potentially different resting state configuration for NRC4. Our work suggests that the Pik CC-NLR pair forms a hetero-complex bound to the plasma membrane in its resting state. How effector binding to the integrated domain (ID) of the Pik-1 sensor leads to the activation of the complex remains to be determined.

Excited to share our latest work on plant immune receptor biochemistry! @kamounlab.bsky.social @hsuanpai.bsky.social @mpcontreras.bsky.social Jose Salguero Linares @danielluedke.bsky.social @adnroide.bsky.social @jiorgoskourelis.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The image shows a picture of Camille Puginier, Postdoctoral Researcher in the Talbot group and Lecoq prize winner, saying “This award is a real honour. I am delighted that lichen research is in the spotlight, as these fascinating organisms still hold many mysteries."

Congratulations to @puginiercamille.bsky.social on her @academiesciences.bsky.social prize for her PhD work at @lrsv-toulouse.bsky.social!

@talbotlabtsl.bsky.social says "I am really proud to see Camille receive this honour and excited about the expertise she's brought to my group"

buff.ly/SCb17kf

Very proud of my PhD alumnus George Greiff for passing his viva and submitting his corrections last week. Not to mention all the other things, a new job at the Cardiff Museum, paper submission and a new house all in the last few weeks! Huge congrats and loved the celebrations 🥳😁.

New preprint from our group led by @metalichen.bsky.social on the discovery of a Starship giant transposable element in the genome of a lichen-forming fungus.

Huge thanks to all coauthors: @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social, @angusb.bsky.social, Ellen Cameron, Mark Blaxter, @robdfinn.bsky.social, and @mcdonaldmeganc.bsky.social!

text. It says: “Ford and Zaphod looked and passed on. “And this baby,” said Ford, “the tangerine star buggy with the black sunbusters…” Again, the star buggy was a small ship-a totally misnamed one in fact, because the one thing it couldn’t manage was interstellar distances. Basically it was a sporty planet hopper dolled up to something it wasn’t. Nice lines though. They passed on.”

Now, all Starship transposons are named after fictional spacecrafts, so naturally we followed suit. After being up till 2 one night, I settled on Tangerine star buggy, which made a brief appearance in D. Adams’ The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Given the color of Xanthoria, it was perfect

phylogenetic tree. Lowest clade is highlighted in orange and has a pointer labelled ‘Methyltransferase from Tangerine in Xanthoria (Lecanoromycetes). This clade is nested within a different clade highlighted in green and labelled “Chaetothyriales (Eurotiomycetes). It, in turn, is nested within a purple clade labelled as “Sordariomycetes”. A sister branch to this big clade contains multiple leaves highlighted in yellow and labelled “other Lecanoromycetes”.

Most interesting part: it seems that Tangerine mediated HGT between symbionts present within a lichen body, as two genes from Tangerine appear to be horizontally transferred from Chaetothyriales, a group of black fungi containing many lichen-associated species, which have been found in Xanthoria.

Zoomed-in Tangerine. A genome fragment is shown in line with blocks in different colors showing genes. A portion of the fragment is highlighted in orange and labeled as ‘Tangerine’. Below, the legend shows starship genes, in three groups. The first contains only the captain. The second is labelled as ‘accessory genes’ and contains DUF3723, PLP, and NLR. The third group is labelled “Cargo genes” and contains the methyltransferase

Tangerine is found in genomes of X. parietina, common sunburst lichen. It has all hallmark features of a Starship: 100 kb in length, the captain gene responsible for transposition, as well as accessory genes and ‘cargo’. The captain gene couldn’t be assigned to any of the described families!

New preprint: 🚀🧬 Starship in the genome of the lichen fungus Xanthoria. Discovery of giant transposons Starships challenged what we thought we knew about fungal genomes. But what about Starships in #lichen fungi? Let us present Tangerine! 🖥️ 🧪 🦠 🧫 #SymbioSky doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Huge thanks to Prof. Dr. Nick Talbot! We were fascinated by his MibiNet talk, exploring how the appressorium uses turgor pressure to infect rice & how the transpressorium spreads the fungus. Brilliant insights!
@talbotlabtsl.bsky.social
#MibiNet

Next generation of 1001 Genomes Plus browser and data download Please indicate all features you would like to see in a browser that displays features of completely sequenced Arabidopsis thaliana genomes

We (Nordborg & Weigel labs) need input on the next generation of genome browsers & data download modes for the #Arabidopsis #1001GenomesPlus project. We have now a curated collection of over 500 long read genomes.

Please help us by filling out this questionnaire: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Some news 🎉
After five incredible years in Tübingen, it’s time to say goodbye.

Starting February, the Mutualisms Lab will relocate to the John Innes Centre, right next door to @berasymbionts.bsky.social and her group at The Sainsbury Laboratory 🪲🦠

New Assistant Professor: Tenure Track - Fungal Biology/Medical Mycology - Minneapolis, Minnesota job with University of Minnesota - Medical School | 12848307 About the Job: The Department of Microbiology & Immunology and the Institute on Infectious Diseases (UMIID) at the University of Minnesota Medical ...

Fungal friends: The University of Minnesota is hiring a tenure track medical mycologist, with emphasis on emergence of pathogens, genomics and evolution!

www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Glorious morning in London

Early start in Düsseldorf after great visit to Mibinet and CEPLAS consortia discussing Magnaporthe biology and lichens! ⁦‪@ceplas.bsky.social ⁦‪@MibiNet.bsky.social

Our new lab logo (created by the amazing @hsuanpai.bsky.social)!
tatsuyanobori.com

Living Maps: Uncovering the Spatial Biology of Plants Tatsuya Nobori brings high-resolution multiomic approaches to plant biology to map how plants interact with microbes on a cellular level in 3D.

Looking for a good read?

@tatsuyanobori.bsky.social is featured on The Scientist sharing his scientific journey from Japan to the UK.
“It circles back to my initial ecological interest and how single-cell level interactions might have a ripple effect on the actual ecosystem."

Great talk today from Luis Larrondo on the remarkable circadian clock control exhibited by fungi and the exquisite light-sensing behaviour that possess, which can be evidenced by image capture using their hyphae as a canvas @thesainsburylab.bsky.social @johninnescentre.bsky.social

If you discover more species in this way, one of them needs to be "Dromius sp. nov"

This is a remarkable study describing a new fungal species in a 407 million year old plant - Rugososporomyces lavoisierae Strullu-Derrien and Schornack sp. nov - using some amazing technology. Worth a read 👇

Genomic evidence for the Holocene codispersal of dogs and humans across Eastern Eurasia As the first domestic species, dogs likely dispersed with different cultural groups during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed 73 ancient dog genomes, including 17 ...

🚨 New paper alert 🚨

Our research, published today in Science, reveals remarkable concordance between human and dog genomes through time, highlighting how deeply intertwined our evolutionary histories have been over the past 11,000 years.

🔗 Read the full paper here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New light on old stones: a fossil #fungus in #symbiosis with one of the oldest known land plants

@chistinesd.bsky.social, et al.

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

@dromius.bsky.social @ffercoq.bsky.social #PlantScience

Summary also available in French and Spanish.

Florigen activation complex forms via multifaceted assembly in Arabidopsis - Nature In flowering plants, DNA–FD–14-3-3 recruits FT to the florigen activation complex both through DNA–FT interactions and by reducing liquid phase condensation of FD protein, which promotes dimerization,...

📣Paper alert! New paper out in @nature.com by the group of George Coupland @mpipz.bsky.social and colleagues on new roles for the florigen protein in flowering 🌱🌿. Congratulations!👏👏 👉https://www.mpipz.mpg.de/pr-coupland-2025-11-en
#Arabidopsis #plantsci
www.nature.com/articles/s41...