Ben Auxier

New pre-print from our group showing remarkable synchrony of proliferative growth and regulated cell death during plant infection- each conidial cell has a different fate - by the rice blast fungus. Led by Alice Eseola with @osesmir.bsky.social Lauren Ryder @danmaclean.bsky.social and Martin Egan

ink painting of drosophila embryos

ink painting of drosophila embryos

ink painting of drosophila embryos

Ink paintings of mitosis in drosophila embryos were a little too niche for the art festival crowd, but I know my Blooskies will love them #sciart 🧪🪰 www.etsy.com/shop/artolog...

1st desk rejection ! I am very proud of this paper and will persist nevertheless,

Wish me luck (and share the paper widely ! Yes, I am doing shameless self-promotion) !

💪

And look at this graphic abstract….. 😱🤯

Video: a Japanese scientist was attacked by flies while giving the acceptance speech for his Ig Nobel Prize-winning research paper that proved painting Zebra-like stripes on cows led to a decrease in biting fly attacks.

"You're in charge of the autoclave"

A timetree of Fungi dated with fossils and horizontal gene transfers - Nature Ecology & Evolution Combining fossil-based and molecular calibrations with data on horizontal gene transfer events, the authors develop a time-calibrated phylogeny of Fungi. This timescale, which integrates analytic uncertainties, suggests an older age of crown Fungi (1,401–896 million years ago), as well as a minimum age for ancient interactions involving fungi and the algal ancestors of embryophytes in terrestrial ecosystems (1,253–797 Ma).

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Reviewers asking for additional experiments

Scientists, DON'T USE LaTeX UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, DON'T GIVE LaTeX TO YOUR YOUNG CHILD FOR VIRTUALLY ANY REASON, BREAK UP THE .tex DOC INTO THREE TOTALLY SEPARATE DOCS (NOT MIXED!), TAKE [Underfull \vbox (badness 10000) has occurred]

Fungus-farming termites can protect their crop by confining weeds with fungistatic soil boluses The symbiotic agriculture of fungus-farming termites can collapse if they fail to prevent invading weeds. Previous studies suggest a role for symbiotic fungistatic microbes in bringing about weed cont...

When harmful fungi invade their carefully cultivated crops, fungus-farming termites fight back with the precision of skilled gardeners, a new Science study reveals, smothering them in soil clumps enriched with microbial allies that inhibit fungal growth. https://scim.ag/4nsAqCu

The problem skulls from Yunxian The relationships of fossils from deep time in China may help reveal ancestral connections for the Denisovans

Million-year-old skulls in China are adding some big wrinkles to the history of modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. BBC report: www.bbc.com/news/article... & @johnhawks.net take: www.johnhawks.net/p/the-proble...

Doctoral Researcher in Evolutionary Genetics [The Department of Biological and Environmental Science](https://www.jyu.fi/bioenv/en) is seeking to recruit a doctoral researcher in evolutionary genetics to start in early January, 2026, or as soon as possible thereafter, on a fixed-term contract for a maximum of three years. The genetics, epigenetics, and evolution group lead by Ilkka Kronholm studies the properties of mutations and spontaneous epigenetic changes, and genetic architecture of complex traits. Our fundamental interest is in the properties of mutations, and how do they interact. Our research questions are focused on understanding how different intrinsic and extrinsic factors affect evolutionary adaptation. As model systems we use fission yeast and the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa. We are currently working on a large experimental evolution study using fission yeast, with two postdocs and one other PhD researcher working on different questions. The larger project that this particular project is part of is funded by the ERC. The idea with this project is that we will be exploring how do different mutations that have arisen during adaptation affect different life-history and physiological traits, and how those changes affect fitness: so investigating the genotype – phenotype – fitness map and possible effects of epistatic interactions. Our system allows very detailed investigation of relationship between genotype and phenotype, since genetic variation is limited and we can leverage the full power of fission yeast genetics. However, in this project the candidate also has some freedom, so that exact questions can also be tailored to the candidates interests within the overall framework of the project. The doctoral researcher is expected to contribute to the current project, plan and perform research, write manuscripts and finally a PhD thesis. Participating in limited amount of teaching can also be arranged.

The Kronholm lab at the University of Jyväskylä is hiring a PhD student to study mutations in experimental evolution. Start date: Jan 2026. Apply by 31 Oct 2025. More info: https://tinyurl.com/mpp8rx7u #phd

I have taken
the Tylenol
that was in
the medicine cabinet

and which
they think probably
is the reason
you like trains

forgive me
but that’s bullshit
you got autism
from your dad

Florida Memory • WPA field recordings in Jacksonville (1939 recording expedition: Herbert Halpert)Florida Memory One reel to reel. (These recordings appear at the end of the reel. The rest of the reel is another WPA expedition.)All of Zora Neale Hurston's Florida recordings can be found on C87-24, including thos...

Maybe www.floridamemory.com/items/show/2...

Or www.floridamemory.com/items/show/2...

Dryad partnership brings easier data sharing to bioRxiv bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

bioRxiv partners with Dryad to enable easier, better linking to curated datasets connect.biorxiv.org/news/2025/09...

Sounds very interesting. What books would you recommend?

I am pretty familiar with bioinformatics, and I cannot follow the methods. Without a crystal clear understanding of biases/artifacts in this new method, there is not much point trying to parse the results. IMO Replication with other methods is essential before any serious consideration.

If it is a big spike, maybe it is possible to localise if there is a particular set of regions that are enriched for this increased LD?

You assume LD will decrease with increasing genomic distance. So the question is why you would have an increase at some intermediate distance. As a start, I would assume some kind of weird pattern in the variants coming from transposable elements or something?

Oooh, name change to Mycological Society of the Americas in the future?

molecular diagram and gel evidence for absence of URA3 as heterozygote, and presence of hph in replacement

Somehow, the cell machinery can make homozygous knockouts from a single transformation! Without a described sexual cycle, this is really important! If you only had heterozygous transformant, the molecular genetics would be very difficult. What a crazy result! 🤯

Homology-mediated transformation of frog-killing fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis illuminates chytrid development and pathogenesis The chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis ( Bd ) infects amphibians and causes chytridiomycosis, a disease linked to global amphibian decline. Despite its ecological importance, Bd has lacked ...

Really cool new results from @fritzlaylin.bsky.social , they got actual working homology-directed transformation working in a chytrid fungus! There are so, so many interesting questions that still need explaining in this group, and molecular genetics can answer a lot!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Yes, indeed. But assuming all alleles have slightly different mutation rates, then if you can carefully measure these rates, it is going to be a 50:50 chance of higher or lower......

Front of the 2025 Canada Post fungus stamp set's Official First Day Cover, featuring images of 5 different fungus stamps against a background that includes larger-size cropped portions of the oyster fungus illustration.

Canada Post released this set of 5 #fungi #stamps last week. I'm so pleased to have had the opportunity to illustrate them!
Design by Joce Creative.
More stamp images: www.emilydamstra.com/canada-post-...

#fungifriends #postagestamps #stampcollecting #philately #fungiart #mushrooms #lichens #SciArt

At some point, these results boil down to "observed events are the ones that are most likely to occur", which is not actually that strange of a statement!

A strange paper. No one says that mutations occur uniformly across the genome. So finding that a particularly common mutation is adaptive is interesting, but I do not see it as groundbreaking as I think the authors feel.

Absolutely amazing! Such cool work ahead from Michael and his group!

Nuclear Fusion in Palladium Metal. No, Really.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: deuterium fusion in a palladium metal electrode. This report isn’t immediately going to change the world, but it seems to have the huge advantage of being real:

Also the word is out: I’m starting my own research group in my scientific hometown, Quebec @ulaval.ca 🇨🇦 More soon!

Reductive evolution of the DNA replication machinery in endosymbiotic fungi The molecular machinery for replicating and repairing DNA accurately is critically important for life and highly conserved across the Tree of Life. Here we show that two major lineages of fungi, Glome...

I’m super happy to present the first discoveries of the RIKEN-Cambridge Joint Crop Symbiosis Research Team, based in Japan 🇯🇵

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

A thread 👇