Lily Peck

What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure Franklin was no victim in how the DNA double helix was solved. An overlooked letter and an unpublished news article, both written in 1953, reveal that she was an equal player.

Great article about Rosalind Franklin's role in the discovery of DNA's structure - "She deserves to be remembered not as the victim of the double helix, but as an equal contributor to the solution of the structure."

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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...

🚨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...

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/...

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...

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 ☕

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.

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.

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

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/...

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/...

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

New paper alert!