Happy New Year!

Hunter on his head. Southern hemisphere view of Orion. Happy New Year!

Plant Science Research Weekly -- Genomic analysis of a lichen photobiont alga (New Phytol.) @metalichen.bsky.social @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social (Summary by Mary Williams @PlantTeaching.bsky.social) buff.ly/IQC6qOT #PlantaePSRW

A nice cluster of Cladonia #lichen spp...plus the remains of what was a cloudberry flower. #fungi #fungifriends #wildflower

Our dispatch: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982225014691 on the recent Hydra volume EM paper by Zhang, Rafa Yuste and colleagues: #connectomics, without synapses https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982225013090 #neuroscience

A blogpost in which I return to a continuing theme: The UK’s continuing economic growth crisis. GDP per person grew by 2.3% a year between 1955 and 2008, when growth slowed down dramatically, never to recover. GDP per person is £16,500 (29%) lower than if pre GFC trend continued

In a paper out this month in @jcb.org we present evidence implicating intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) as key to junctional assembly and function 2/n 🧪 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41099653/

Check out this "journal club" article, by me and Matt Wengler, describing a cool recent paper on injecting bacteria into fungal mycelium. With some clever artificial selection, the fungus adapts to the presence of the bacteria, making the symbiosis stable! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Lab Xmas party with the traditional arm wrestle with ⁦‪Camilla Molinari, brilliantly organised by ⁦‪@mattrwengler‬⁩ ⁦‪@puginiercamille‬⁩

Lichenomphalia hudsoniana, a #mushroom producing #lichen. The green discs are the thallus/body of the lichen. It produces these beautiful, tiny mushrooms that are typically an inch or less high. #fungi #fungifriends Newfoundland, Canada

Xanthoria parietina #lichen apothecium. First try with sections on the macro setup. Lessons learned: cup diffusor works. Use a sharper razor blade for a better cut...

Seaside lichen collage at my little, coastal hometown in Newfoundland, Canada. A couple of Xanthoria spp, Physcia, Caloplaca, possibly Rhizocarpon. #lichen #fungi #fungifriends

Xanthoria (I think) on a quartz vein through bluish granite. NWT, Canada. #lichen #fungi #fungifriends #geology

Here is an example of GFP-CARa localization at the extrahaustorial membrane that did not make it into the manuscript but still is nice.

Are you interested in using synthetic approaches to promote arbuscular mycorrhiza symbiosis? Then our PostDoc position may be for you: jobs.mpimp-golm.mpg.de/jobposting/b...

Extensive horizontal transfer of transposable elements shapes fungal mobilomes @currentbiology.bsky.social by @jromeijn.bsky.social et al from @mfseidl.bsky.social www.cell.com/current-biol...

@talbotlabtsl.bsky.social giving our annual Blackman Lecture today. An incredible career investigating the biology of rice blast fungus

Honoured to give the Blackman Lecture today @ox.ac.uk and see the fantastic new Life and Mind Building.

Congratulations Camille! @puginiercamille.bsky.social - well deserved !

Excited to share our latest work on plant immune receptor biochemistry! @kamounlab.bsky.social @hsuanpai.bsky.social @mpcontreras.bsky.social Jose Salguero Linares @danielluedke.bsky.social @adnroide.bsky.social @jiorgoskourelis.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Congratulations to @puginiercamille.bsky.social on her @academiesciences.bsky.social prize for her PhD work at @lrsv-toulouse.bsky.social! @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social says "I am really proud to see Camille receive this honour and excited about the expertise she's brought to my group" buff.ly/SCb17kf

Very proud of my PhD alumnus George Greiff for passing his viva and submitting his corrections last week. Not to mention all the other things, a new job at the Cardiff Museum, paper submission and a new house all in the last few weeks! Huge congrats and loved the celebrations 🥳😁.

New preprint from our group led by @metalichen.bsky.social on the discovery of a Starship giant transposable element in the genome of a lichen-forming fungus.

Huge thanks to all coauthors: @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social, @angusb.bsky.social, Ellen Cameron, Mark Blaxter, @robdfinn.bsky.social, and @mcdonaldmeganc.bsky.social!

Now, all Starship transposons are named after fictional spacecrafts, so naturally we followed suit. After being up till 2 one night, I settled on Tangerine star buggy, which made a brief appearance in D. Adams’ The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Given the color of Xanthoria, it was perfect

Most interesting part: it seems that Tangerine mediated HGT between symbionts present within a lichen body, as two genes from Tangerine appear to be horizontally transferred from Chaetothyriales, a group of black fungi containing many lichen-associated species, which have been found in Xanthoria.

Tangerine is found in genomes of X. parietina, common sunburst lichen. It has all hallmark features of a Starship: 100 kb in length, the captain gene responsible for transposition, as well as accessory genes and ‘cargo’. The captain gene couldn’t be assigned to any of the described families!

New preprint: 🚀🧬 Starship in the genome of the lichen fungus Xanthoria. Discovery of giant transposons Starships challenged what we thought we knew about fungal genomes. But what about Starships in #lichen fungi? Let us present Tangerine! 🖥️ 🧪 🦠 🧫 #SymbioSky doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Huge thanks to Prof. Dr. Nick Talbot! We were fascinated by his MibiNet talk, exploring how the appressorium uses turgor pressure to infect rice & how the transpressorium spreads the fungus. Brilliant insights! @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social #MibiNet

We (Nordborg & Weigel labs) need input on the next generation of genome browsers & data download modes for the #Arabidopsis #1001GenomesPlus project. We have now a curated collection of over 500 long read genomes. Please help us by filling out this questionnaire: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Some news 🎉 After five incredible years in Tübingen, it’s time to say goodbye. Starting February, the Mutualisms Lab will relocate to the John Innes Centre, right next door to @berasymbionts.bsky.social and her group at The Sainsbury Laboratory 🪲🦠

Fungal friends: The University of Minnesota is hiring a tenure track medical mycologist, with emphasis on emergence of pathogens, genomics and evolution! www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Glorious morning in London

Early start in Düsseldorf after great visit to Mibinet and CEPLAS consortia discussing Magnaporthe biology and lichens! ⁦‪@ceplas.bsky.social ⁦‪@MibiNet.bsky.social

Our new lab logo (created by the amazing @hsuanpai.bsky.social)! tatsuyanobori.com

Looking for a good read? @tatsuyanobori.bsky.social is featured on The Scientist sharing his scientific journey from Japan to the UK. “It circles back to my initial ecological interest and how single-cell level interactions might have a ripple effect on the actual ecosystem."

Great talk today from Luis Larrondo on the remarkable circadian clock control exhibited by fungi and the exquisite light-sensing behaviour that possess, which can be evidenced by image capture using their hyphae as a canvas @thesainsburylab.bsky.social @johninnescentre.bsky.social

This is a remarkable study describing a new fungal species in a 407 million year old plant - Rugososporomyces lavoisierae Strullu-Derrien and Schornack sp. nov - using some amazing technology. Worth a read 👇

🚨 New paper alert 🚨 Our research, published today in Science, reveals remarkable concordance between human and dog genomes through time, highlighting how deeply intertwined our evolutionary histories have been over the past 11,000 years. 🔗 Read the full paper here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New light on old stones: a fossil #fungus in #symbiosis with one of the oldest known land plants @chistinesd.bsky.social, et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @dromius.bsky.social @ffercoq.bsky.social #PlantScience Summary also available in French and Spanish.

📣Paper alert! New paper out in @nature.com by the group of George Coupland @mpipz.bsky.social and colleagues on new roles for the florigen protein in flowering 🌱🌿. Congratulations!👏👏 👉https://www.mpipz.mpg.de/pr-coupland-2025-11-en #Arabidopsis #plantsci www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Dogs have been part of human culture for far longer than previously thought based on genomic evidence from @lachiescarsbrook.bsky.social and team. Great read. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Thought-provoking seminar today from Andrew Millar - on open data, & the science/economics of Arrival - pivoting your science to address the most important threats to humanity. Hugely impressive, stimulating talk & discussion. @earlhaminst.bsky.social

We had another great TSL Autumn Symposium, where scientists shared their 2025 achievements with our Scientific Advisory Board 🌱🧪 Thanks to everyone for a fantastic week of connecting, learning and celebrating! 🎉 Stay tuned for our TSL prize announcements 🔜

Thank you, Laura Tran from The Scientist, for this profile! And special thanks to @joeecker.bsky.social and @thorstenlangner.bsky.social for their kind words. I feel very fortunate to be surrounded by such supportive mentors, colleagues, and lab members!

We are pleased to announce that @tatsuyanobori.bsky.social has won the Young Investigator Award by the Japanese Society of Plant Physiologists. The award ceremony and the recipient's lecture will take place at the next Tokyo Annual Meeting on 14 March 2026. buff.ly/pemelQu

Today is a big day as the Precision Breeding Act comes into force 🌱 @kamounlab.bsky.social: “This is a milestone for UK science and innovation. We now have the regulatory framework to translate discovery into impact — improving crops, strengthening food security, and benefiting society” 🌿

Chromosome‐level #genome assembly of the #photobiont microalga Trebouxia sp. ‘A48’ from the #lichen Xanthoria parietina 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... by Tagirdzhanova et al. @metalichen.bsky.social @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social @WileyPlantSci

Big thanks to the co-authors - @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social and Jasper Raistrick, an undergrad student who did a lot of work to isolate the alga - as well as the staff of SAG!

New paper led by @metalichen.bsky.social from our group presenting a chromosome-level assembly of the Trebouxia photobiont alga from the lichen Xanthoria parietina - a resource we hope will enable significant new insight into the symbiosis @newphyt.bsky.social doi.org/10.1111/nph....