Gulnara Tagirdzhanova

I had such fun thinking, reading and writing this Tansley Review on #arbuscular #mycorrhizal #fungal mycelia. We need a more fungal-centric view to better understand not only the AM fungi, but also their many ecological roles.
@newphyt.bsky.social

🔗 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/DHGB3S....

1/ Ever needed to annotate TEs in a fungal genome, but didn't know where to start?

We have released #MycoMobilome, a community-focused non-redundant database of transposable element consensus sequences for the fungal kingdom, constructed from >4,000 fungal genomes!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Ah, good to know! Sorry if I caused you to worry unnecessarily!

I wouldn't recommend it, aren't yew berries poisonous?

In this paper, we show that photobiont diversity increases as lichens age. Interestingly, as the thallus grows, autosporine algae become more prevalent at the expense of zoosporine algae, likely because the latter play a key role in lichen establishment. 1url.cz/@Proto

Wooo!

VACANCY: Trainee Lichenologist @n-t-s.bsky.social

Not seen one of these advertised before!

www.asva.co.uk/jobs/trainee...

The cellular mechanics of symbiosis: sensing friend from foe

🚨 Save the date! Thrilled to be co-organizing the next iteration of the @embl.org Symposium on the Cellular Mechanics of Symbiosis (📅 March 17-20), w/ @floravincent.bsky.social, @hassansalem.bsky.social & Tom Richards.
www.embl.org/about/info/c...
#EESSymbiosis #Symbiosis #SymbioSky #MicroSky 🦠

Lediga jobb vid Stockholms universitet Jobb

We have several open positions in my group, funded from the ERC Grant on the Early Sequestered Germline of Fungi. We search broadly for applicants at both PhD and master-level, with a dedicated interest in fungal evolutionary biology. Please forward and RT!
Find the positions here: su.varbi.com

Sanctuary: a Starship transposon facilitating the movement of the virulence factor ToxA in fungal wheat pathogens | mBio The work presented here expands our understanding of a novel group of mobile genetic elements called Starships that facilitate the horizontal exchange of numerous genes between fungal pathogens. Our a...

Delighted that our work on the Sanctuary Starship #transposon is now published! A big thanks to all co-authors, especially to the ever-amazing @mcdonaldmeganc.bsky.social for her mentorship!

doi.org/10.1128/mbio...

The grave risks for science as the whole of leaving fundamental scientific infrastructure in the hands of for-profit capitalist company. Essential scholarly services should be internationally curated by value-based societies/orders/colleges.
🧪

Plant-associated fungi co-opt ancient antimicrobials for host manipulation Evolutionary histories of effector proteins secreted by fungal pathogens to mediate plant colonization remain largely elusive. While most functionally characterized effectors modulate plant immunity, ...

📣 NEW PREPRINT 📝

We identified evolutionary origins of many fungal effectors!
We show that fungi secrete lots of antimicrobial proteins, and that some of them were repurposed by plant pathogens for host immune suppression.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

cc @teamthomma.bsky.social

Early germline sequestration in a basidiomycete fungus In sexual organisms, inheritance of new mutations is highly dependent on the timing of germline definition. Here, we used the fairy ring–forming fungus Marasmius oreades to challenge the general assum...

It started as a master thesis project by Markus Hiltunen, and ended up in this publication in Science. What a fun project to work on! Thanks Markus - and all other coauthors, too, for a great team work! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Reminder about our special issue on lichen symbiosis in Lichenologist 👇 the deadline for submission is in September

A glass door with several posters attached on and next to it. One says "välkommen till intitutionen för ekologi, miljö och botanik". The other has letters DEEP in big font and below text "Department of ecology, environment and plant studies". Both poster have Stockholm University logo.

Happy to share that I’ve now joined @hannajohannesson.bsky.social's group in Stockholm University! Thanks to support from Wenner-Gren Foundation, I will be working on self/non-self recognition in lichen symbionts

any display of solidarity, non-bigoted pride and joy - anything that feels like hope - pierces through my defences and I weep and can't even tell who or what I'm crying about

Which both were great and both made me cry my eyes out. I have resigned myself to the world being horrible and getting worse, I can function pretty well despite it, but

A crowd of people, some with pride flags, standing along a street. Behind them the Stockholm city hall flying a Swedish flag. In the distance, a flagpost with a rainbow flag

Corner of a window frame. Outside, can see a tree, an old church in the distance, and a crowd of people with pride flags

I also loved how as I was clearing out the said apartment, I got to see Norwich pride from my window, and then arrived to Sweden precisely in time for Stockholm pride

A brick wall painted grey with a street lamp and a sign saying 'labour in vain yard'

I'm going to miss beautiful Norwich and my apartment with the official address 'Labour in Vain Yard', which was dope and made me feel like a children book character

me and a group of colleagues assembled in a coffee room

me standing next to a big sign saying "Norwich Research Park. Thank you for visiting"

Some belated personal news: at the end of July it was my time to say bye to @thesainsburylab.bsky.social and Norwich. Already missing my dear friends and the lab! Big thanks to @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social and everyone else with whom I crossed paths in these 3 years!

It looks like Hiroshima and the current Gaza death toll is basically the same (>60k)

Starship giant transposons dominate plastic genomic regions in a fungal plant pathogen and drive virulence evolution Nature Communications - Giant transposons, known as ‘Starships’, mediate horizontal gene transfer between fungal genomes. Here, Sato et al. show that Starships occupy genome regions...

📣 Happy to see the journal publication 📄 of our work on Starships 🚀 in Verticillium fungi: terrific work led by @yukiyosato.bsky.social
rdcu.be/exBSp

Translational research is digging for gold. Basic research is learning where and what to dig. The more funding is diverted to translation, the more we deplete the research ecosystem, driving the supplies of "gold" - immediately translatable findings and innovations - to unsustainably low levels.

sorry for potential tmi, but I can see in this photo the window of my apartment and it somehow brings me lots of joy

my modest disagreement is that i think it is important to signal virtue even if, privately, you are a piece of shit. performing decency is an important part of maintaining the norm that decency is part of a well ordered society.

I’m ready at this point to say I’m done with anyone in the news criticizing Bluesky

UVC-Intense Exoplanets May Not Be Uninhabitable: Evidence from a Desert Lichen | Astrobiology Many of the recently discovered Earth-like exoplanets are hosted by M and F stars, stars that emit intense UVC, especially during a flare. We studied whether such planets are nevertheless habitable by irradiating a desert lichen, Clavascidium lacinulatum, with 254-nm 55 W/m2 UVC nonstop for 3 months in the laboratory. Only 50% of its algal photobiont cells were inactivated. To put this in perspective, we used the same setup to challenge the photobiont cells but grown in pure culture, and Deinococcus radiodurans, the most radiation-resistant bacterium on Earth. Entire monolayers of hundreds of cells were inactivated in just 60 s. Further studies indicated that the cortex of the lichen was rendered UVC-opaque by deposits of phenolic secondary metabolites in its interstices. The lichen was injured only because, while most photochemical reactive oxygen species were quenched, photochemical ozone was not. We conclude that UVC-intense exoplanets are not necessarily uninhabitable to photosynthetic organisms.

Okay, now this is wild - You can expose a desert lichen Clavascidium lacinulatum to UVC radiation for 3 months, at same dose that kills Deinococcus radiodurans, the most radiation-resistant bacteria, in 60 sec - and it survives! Lichens rock!

www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/...

Guidelines for preventing and reporting contamination in low-biomass microbiome studies - Nature Microbiology In this Consensus Statement, the authors outline strategies for processing, analysing and interpreting low-biomass microbiome samples, and provide recommendations to minimize contaminants.

New Consensus Statement in Nature Microbiology!
Working with low-biomass microbiome samples? From deep subsurface rocks to human lungs, contamination is a major challenge. We offer field-to-data analysis guidelines to help keep your results clean.
📖 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

🚨 Job Alert at RBG Kew! We are looking for Lab Research Assistants in genomics to join our Fungarium Sequencing Project! Do you like Fungi? Do you want to develop new -omics techniques? Interested in historical collections? Join the team! Posts to start ASAP. Apply here:https://lnkd.in/e2BpWJpA

My friend and colleague Remco Heesen once told me study of social epistemology of science made him "less trusting of any particular scientific paper but more impressed by science as a whole." I honestly think that's the right lesson to draw. But I think holding both attitudes doesn't come naturally.