Lily Peck

Concept of a Starship transposon jumping out of a fungal culture. Illustration by Oen Gregory.

Thrilled to have our recent review on giant #fungal #transposons, called Starships, featured on the cover of Trends in Genetics! Accompanied by some fantastic artwork! With @mycomile.bsky.social. www.cell.com/trends/genet...

03.12.2024 02:01 — 👍 81    🔁 33    💬 2    📌 6

🚨THIS IS A THREE-LINE WHIP 🚨

The Government is trying to pass a law that could force the public to bailout failing water companies. We need to act now, before it's too late.

PLEASE SIGN AND SHARE!
#BanTheBailouts

www.sas.org.uk/water-qualit...

28.11.2024 17:23 — 👍 61    🔁 37    💬 2    📌 4

Gene transfer between fungal species triggers repeated coffee wilt disease outbreaks Two outbreaks of coffee wilt disease have devastated African coffee production. A PLOS Biology study suggests that horizontal gene transfer via Starships between two fungal strains played a key role i...

Amazing primer by Brenda and Michael Wingfield on the new tour de force research paper from @lilypeck.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

11.12.2024 08:32 — 👍 6    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Coffee wilt disease evolves new genetic weapons to target crops | Imperial News | Imperial College London Scientists reveal how coffee wilt fungi gained genes to better infect arabica and robusta crops.

A huge amount of work went into this paper by myself and all the co-authors, and thanks to CABI, @imperiallifesci.bsky.social and @ox.ac.uk for the press releases:
www.imperial.ac.uk/news/258997/...

www.biology.ox.ac.uk/article/outb...

11.12.2024 01:11 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

And fungal geneticists favourite buzzword: an 80kb Starship mobile element has inserted between highly expressed genes in the Fusarium xylarioides population which infects the people's favourite arabica coffee ☕

11.12.2024 01:10 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Horizontally transferred regions contain highly-expressed genes following infection of coffee plants, including 'secreted in xylem' effector genes from Fusarium oxysporum. Specific transposons are also shared between Fusarium xylarioides and F. oxysporum.

11.12.2024 01:09 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

We found five large horizontal transfers which are differentially present across the populations. Several of these show close matches to mobile pathogenic chromosomes from Fusarium oxysporum.

11.12.2024 01:09 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Now to dive into the details...

We published the first nearly-chromosomal reference genome for Fusarium xylarioides, the coffee wilt pathogen, and found multiple genetically differentiated populations within a species complex

11.12.2024 01:09 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Gene transfer between fungal species triggers repeated coffee wilt disease outbreaks Two outbreaks of coffee wilt disease have devastated African coffee production. A PLOS Biology study suggests that horizontal gene transfer via Starships between two fungal strains played a key role i...

If you don't want the directors cut, an excellent primer also published in @plosbiology.org explains in common language our key findings, and why they matter: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

11.12.2024 01:08 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Excited to share a new paper in @plosbiology.org suggesting that horizontal gene transfer between 2 fungal species played a key role in the repeated emergence of coffee wilt disease 🧵

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

11.12.2024 01:08 — 👍 7    🔁 4    💬 2    📌 0

[as you can probably tell] it is a very new account!

11.12.2024 00:32 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

New paper alert!

10.12.2024 00:54 — 👍 5    🔁 3    💬 1    📌 0