Jessica Brown Lab

When humans create an artificial island, how do fungi colonize this new habitat?

Using the Danish island Peberholm as an experimental system, a recent Fungal Ecology article examines arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal succession on new land. doi.org/10.1016/j.fu...

📷 Wikipedia

Two Billion Years of Fungal Evolution: How Symbiosis Shaped Earth's Most Diverse Kingdom Fungi emerged approximately 2.4 billion years ago in primeval seas, likely colonising land before plants around one billion years ago

Educational short read on 2 billion years of fungal evolution from ancestral marine flagellates to mushrooms.
www.mycostories.com/post/two-bil... #fungi #evolution #symbiosis #mycorrhiza 🍄

The impact of phenotypic heterogeneity on fungal pathogenicity and drug resistance This review discusses the contribution of phenotypic heterogeneity in fungi to pathogenesis and antifungal drug resistance.

🦠

The impact of phenotypic heterogeneity on fungal pathogenicity and drug resistance

#fungi #mycology #DrugResistance #pathogens

academic.oup.com/femsre/artic...

Mutualist-pathogen co-colonisation modulates phosphoinositide signatures at host intracellular interfaces: Nicotiana benthamiana plants expressing biosensors for PI4P and PI(4,5)P2. PI(4,5)P2 was tip-enriched at mutualist structures but evenly distributed around pathogen structures. PI4P was absent from pathogen extrahaustorial membranes but present at invasive hyphae and mutualist interfaces. Co-colonisation triggered PI4P recruitment at pathogen haustoria, and enhanced resistance to P. palmivora. Graphic by Alex Guyon.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi boost plant resilience by remodelling the plant-pathogen membrane interface
Check-out the latest paper from @alexguyon.bsky.social & @dromius.bsky.social
📖 doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social
News article www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/news/arbuscu...

Abstract deadline today for Fungal Genetics! And still time to register, don't miss one of the best meetings for fungal genetics and genomics, an exciting meeting with great colleagues. If you are new to fungal biology you will find a welcoming community to share your science. #Fungal26 🧬🍄💻🦠🌱🪲

Insights into current coccidioidomycosis therapeutic pathways | Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy Coccidioidomycosis (“San Joaquin Valley Fever”) is a systemic fungal infection caused by the dimorphic fungi Coccidioides immitis and Coccidioides posadasii, which are endemic to regions of the Southw...

FIRST first-author pub for Brent is OUT!
“Insights into Current Coccidioidomycosis Therapeutic Pathways” now in @asm.org

Fluconazole dominates, but switches are common in severe cases. Proud mentor moment! 🎉 @cudeptofmedicine.bsky.social

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Stable hypermutators revealed by the genomic landscape of genes involved in genome stability among yeast species Abstract. Mutator phenotypes are short-lived due to the rapid accumulation of deleterious mutations. Yet, recent observations reveal that certain fungi can

New work led by members of the @rokaslab.bsky.social! ☺️ 1,154 yeast genomes in the Saccharomycotina subphylum were surveyed for their relationship between reduced gene repertoires broadly associated with genome stability functions and elevated evolutionary rates.🧬
academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

Fungal endophytes Organisms are commonly grouped into ecological guilds that reflect their shared resource use and similar ecological roles. The guild concept has been …

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🌿 Excited to share our Primer on fungal endophytes, the elusive members of the fungal kingdom that defy easy classification. Neither pathogens nor symbionts in the strict sense, they challenge how we define ecological guilds. @umr-iam.bsky.social

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

Assistant Professor Cell Biology Current University of Arkansas System employees, including student employees and graduate assistants, need to log in to Workday via MyApps.Microsoft.com, then access Find Jobs from the Workday search ...

Very excited to announce that our department is now accepting applications for a tenure track faculty position in Cell Biology: uasys.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UASYS/...

Come join our wonderful department!

We have a new paper out in Molecular Ecology, led by @devinbendixsen.bsky.social ! Reproductive isolation due to divergent ecological selection is accompanied by vast genomic instability in experimentally evolved yeast populations onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Assistant Professor (Quantitative Microbe-Plant-Environment Interactions), Dept of Microbiology, Fall 2026 apply.interfolio.com/173345 at University of Tennessee - Knoxville. Position is part of a faculty cluster hire in Bioinformatics, Genomics and Quantitative-based Solutions for Food Security.

AI-generated drawing of a woman looking through a microscope with DNA and fungi drawn in the background. The text contains the same content as the bsky post.

My group at is hiring a PhD student to explore how fungal pathogens that live in the environment will adapt their genomes, acquire new phenotypes, and perhaps even increased infectivity as a result of climate change. Please share!

More info and applications at @ jobs.uni-jena.de/vrbup

Mycoviruses steer fungal fitness Nature Microbiology - A mycovirus drives the fitness of the lung-infecting fungus Aspergillus fumigatus under stress, helping it to survive within immune cells, and thus shaping its pathogenesis.

Our study on a mycovirus that boosts fungal virulence is now out — and beautifully covered in this Behind the Paper piece by Amariliz Rivera

Huge thanks for capturing the heart of the story so thoughtfully. @natmicrobiol.nature.com rdcu.be/eB9yg

A Fungus, Not Its Insect Host, Paints the World Red Lac insects carry a yeast-like symbiont that produces a commercially important bright red pigment, revealing insights about insect-microbe symbiosis.

www.the-scientist.com/a-fungus-not...

I love teaching this experiment! I also like that both scientists had (have; Meselson is alive) long and, I hope, happy lives. Karmic rewards for beautiful science?

From novice to expert: preparing your peer review | mBio Peer review is the process that academic journals, conferences, and funding agencies use to ensure the quality of scholarly work before it is published, presented, or funded. Reviewers for academic jo...

Excited to share our editorial on peer review, out now in #mBio! This was a mighty group effort with my mBio Early Career Editorial Board peer mentoring group
@proctordm.bsky.social and Rachy Abraham.

From novice to expert: preparing your peer review | mBio journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Diverse bat organoids provide pathophysiological models for zoonotic viruses Bats are important reservoirs of zoonotic pathogens, but suitable model systems for comprehensively exploring host-pathogen interactions and assessing spillover risks remain limited. To address this g...

#NatureMicroPicks

🦇 ex vivo models for bat viruses!

Bat organoids as new models to study zoonotic viruses.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The hidden cost of retesting vaccines A reader asked me a question I get semi-regularly about vaccine skeptics:

Vaccine skeptics want to retest vaccines, claiming they haven't been tested well enough. Devil's advocates ask "where's the harm in that?"

But there is harm. Lots of it.

open.substack.com/pub/epiellie...

Trump’s NIH And NSF Cuts Estimated To Cost The U.S. Economy $10 Billion Annually Economists find public R&D drives a quarter of U.S. productivity growth — and pays for itself

🧪 Basic science boosts the economy:

"The proposed dismantling of NSF [and NIH] raises an urgent question: do these cuts actually save money or merely delay spending until the bill gets larger?

The answer is clear: these cuts will cost the economy billions."

Donate to Help Save Lives: Aid People with Meningitis in Uganda, organized by Ciara Featherly Cryptococcal and tuberculosis meningitis are serious brain infec… Ciara Featherly needs your support for Help Save Lives: Aid People with Meningitis in Uganda

We are fund raising to support our meningitis research team in Uganda to continue our work on fungal meningitis and TB meningitis. We work on prevention, diagnosis, and treatment --- and will continue with or without US gov support.
gofund.me/9e797ba7

Only one week to go until the abstract submission deadline for Candida and Candidiasis 2025! Make sure to submit your abstract by 15 May 2025 at 23:59 BST. Find out more on our website. microb.io/Candida2025A... #Candida2025

Translation meeting in Edinburgh (that I'm co-organising).
Invited speakers include Allen Buskirk on his deep mechanistic work on prokarotic translation, Karen Merchante on plant ribosomal proteins and their effect, and the UK Translation community bringing their best science!
#RNAbiology #ribosome

After the past few months, I'm taking the win and stopping.

For your own sake, I hope that you are referencing the airport in Argentina and not anything to do with cardiovascular health.

GM-CSF–mediated epithelial-immune cell cross-talk orchestrates pulmonary immunity to Aspergillus fumigatus During mold infection, epithelial-derived GM-CSF licenses neutrophil killing of fungal cells, leading to improved survival.

So happy to see this story come together. Check it out! Kathleen Mills and many collaborators - GM-CSF–mediated epithelial-immune cell cross-talk orchestrates pulmonary immunity to Aspergillus fumigatus | Science Immunology www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A humanized antibody against mucormycosis targets angioinvasion and augments the host immune response An anti-CotH humanized IgG1 antibody protects against lethal mucormycosis when given as adjunctive therapy to immunocompromised mice.

Important work in battling Mucormycosis www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... - CotH is an interesting spore coat gene which has a bacterial origin in these and several other ZZ fungi. In Mucor it is important for their blood vessel invasion.

Use their names: there are no basal, lower, or early diverging fungi Fungal biologists have embraced phylogenies for understanding the biology of this diverse group in an evolutionary framework. In an attempt to highlight lineages of fungi that are distinct from the...

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

White House Finds Workaround to Shut Down NIH-Backed Medical Research From the beginning of this drama going on a month ago the...

The WHITE HOUSE has found a workaround to block NIH-backed medical research even after judges ordered them to allow it to go forward. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/white...