Celine Caseys

Combined generalist and host-specific transcriptional strategies enable host generalism in the fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea How generalist pathogens infect phylogenetically diverse hosts remains a central question in plant-pathogen biology. In particular, the extent to which broad host range is enabled by genetic variation...

The first in a coming array of papers looking at the co-transcriptome of 72 Botrytis genotype in 10 different host plants is out. Summary is the pathogen uses a combination of general virulence and host specific plasticity (not new genes) to infect dicots. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Experimental design of infecting 72 pathogen genotypes on 12 genotypes each of 8 different dicot plants to compare virulence.

Midst of the labs Genetics publish-athon from @ccaseys.bsky.social. Infecting a population on host genotypes spread across 8 dicots we could show that a generalist pathogen has both generalist and specialist genes url:https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/doi/10.1093/genetics/iyaf079/8158657

Haploid facultative parthenogenesis in sunflower sexual reproduction - Nature Spontaneous parthenogenesis in sunflower has been used to develop a scalable doubled haploid breeding system.

Really neat paper out in @nature.com on an efficient way to produce doubled haploids in sunflower, thanks to the serendipitous discovery of spontaneous haploid parthenogenesis.
That might be the least intelligible sentence I have ever written - great science communication Marco!
tinyurl.com/yxwc2a5v

Postdoctoral Researcher - VIB OverviewThe group of Specialized Metabolism, led by Prof. Alain Goossens at the VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology, and the metabolic engineering researc

Recruitment time! You're a junior postdoc and want to discover and produce bioactive fungal metabolites that are involved in the chemical warfare between fungi and plants? Then apply here!
jobs.vib.be/j/108923/pos...

Phylogenetic and genomic mechanisms shaping glucosinolate innovation Plants have created an immense diversity of specialized metabolites to optimize fitness within a complex environment. Each plant lineage has created n…

📜 Phylogenetic and genomic mechanisms shaping glucosinolate innovation

🧑‍🔬 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social, Amanda Agosto Ramos, @spicybotrytis.bsky.social

📔 Current Opinion in Plant Biology

🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#️⃣ #PlantScience #PlantImmunity #PlantMetabolites #Glucosinolates

Treetops pierce a yellow fog.

📝 Fungal Friends Help Young Trees Thrive in Mixed Forests 🧵
https://doi.org/n249

Young spruce trees grow better with pine neighbours thanks to underground helpers.
#Botany #PlantScience 🧪 #InBrief

EPFL Life Sciences Early Independent Research Scholar (ELISIR) From exceptional PhD directly to independent group leader

Fantastic opportunity: 🚀 Calling early-career scientists! Apply for the 2025 ELISIR Scholar at EPFL. From outstanding PhD straight to group leader. Join an interdisciplinary research community to conduct independent research in any area of #lifesciences in Lausanne, CH
👉 go.epfl.ch/ELISIR

How long for the extraction? It reminds me doing raspberry liquor with my dad. Homemade is the best kind

Zymoseptoria tritici show local differences in within-field diversity and effector variation Zymoseptoria tritici is a cosmopolitan hemibiotrophic wheat pathogen with a high mutation rate and a mixed reproduction system, leading to challenges in traditional farming management. For successful ...

New preprint! I always wondered: How much diversity do pathogens have within a single field? This important to assess the risk of resistance breakdown or spread of fungicide resistance . Together with colleagues from BASF we looked into this.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Meet the fungi that live in the sea Despite being known to science for over a century thanks to a few early pioneering marine mycologists, most people have never heard of marine fungi.

Meet the fungi that live in the sea

Transposon-triggered epigenetic chromatin dynamics modulate EFR-related pathogen response - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology Here, the authors show that an inverted-repeat transposon located next to the pattern recognition receptor ELONGATION FACTOR-TU RECEPTOR (EFR)-encoding gene in Arabidopsis controls chromatin organizat...

Cool, elegant paper. Inverted repeat transposon near EFR affects chromatin organization and gene expression to fine-tune immune responses. #MPMI #plantimmunity
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I feed plants to a eat-it-all fungus

GitHub - RILAB/statements: Successful Job Applications and Grants Successful Job Applications and Grants. Contribute to RILAB/statements development by creating an account on GitHub.

New! @jenncoughlan.bsky.social kindly shared their MIRA NIH award with our github repo. If you have a successful grant app you're willing to share, please contribute! github.com/RILAB/statem...

Could fungi actually cause a zombie apocalypse? Be very afraid – if you’re an insect.

Could fungi actually cause a zombie apocalypse? https://buff.ly/49XzsrR #CuriousKids

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE TO ALL WHO OBSERVE!

(Happy summer solstice to the rest of you.)

Striga developmental stages of interest.

🌱 Tamera Taylor, Jiregna Daksa, Alexander Chen, Siobhan Brady and Dorota Kawa collaborated on a discussion of how #microbiomes offer hope against Striga in #sorghum. This study explores how soil microbes suppress this parasitic weed in Sub-Saharan crops.
▶️ bio-protocol.org/en/bpdetail?...

The wild side of grape genomics With broad genetic diversity and as a source of key agronomic traits, wild grape species (Vitis spp.) are crucial to enhance viticulture’s climatic resilience and sustainability. This review discusses how recent breakthroughs in the genome assembly and analysis of wild grape species have led to discoveries on grape evolution, from wild species’ adaptation to environmental stress to grape domestication. We detail how diploid chromosome-scale genomes from wild Vitis spp. have enabled the identification of candidate disease-resistance and flower sex determination genes and the creation of the first Vitis graph-based pangenome. Finally, we explore how wild grape genomics can impact grape research and viticulture, including aspects such as data sharing, the development of functional genomics tools, and the acceleration of genetic improvement.

🍇 Dario Cantu, Mélanie Massonnet and Noé Cochetel collaborated on ways wild grape #genomics unlocks climate resilience for viticulture. Advances in pangenomics & haplotype analysis reveal traits for disease resistance, adaptability, & sustainability.
▶️ www.cell.com/trends/genet...
#ClimateAdaptation

Opinion | Sorry, but This Is the Future of Food (Gift Article) Every farm, even the scenic ones with red barns and rolling hills, is a kind of environmental crime scene, an echo of whatever wilderness it once replaced.

Important piece by @mikegrunwald.bsky.social. Food systems convos can get polarized between “boost yields” vs “reduce env. harms” vs “change consumption patterns.” The reality, as this piece describes, is that the 🌎 needs to do it all to feed 9-10 billion people while protecting nature & climate.

HI old friends! Finally took the leap here to say I have several open positions going in my lab at the moment (and more to come).
1) PhD studentship in collaboration with the Royal Horticultural Society (genomics)
2) Biochemistry Postdoc to understand how Starships move

Check out the links below!

Plant Physiology Webinar: Root Development YouTube video by Plantae

It's online!
If you missed yesterday's Plant Physiology focus issue webinar on Root Development, don't worry, you can watch the recording here. @hhtormar.bsky.social @idane.bsky.social
youtu.be/1q_Z9PI8_Is?...
#PlantSci
academic.oup.com/plphys/issue...

Horizontal transfers between fungal Fusarium species contributed to successive outbreaks of coffee wilt disease Outbreaks of coffee wilt disease, caused by the fungus Fusarium xylarioides, have severely impacted coffee production. By sequencing and comparing 13 historical strains spanning 60 years and multiple ...

"Sit down and enjoy the coffee"

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

🔬 Maeli Melotto, Brianna Fochs and, Zachariah Jaramillo explore stomata: a plant’s frontline defense against pathogens. Learn how plants & pathogens battle for survival at this critical gateway.
▶️ www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

#PlantImmunity #CropScience #PlantPathology

Why Fungi Could Get Higher Conservation Status And Why It Matters The UK and Chile are proposing at the UN’s biodiversity conference COP16 in Colombia that fungi receive the same status to animals and plants. This could help foster and funding research.

Our first Bluesky post contains some good news for #fungi! After a long history of being unprotected, COP16 marked a huge advancement in the conservation of fungi. 🍄🥳

Thanks to work led by our partners at Fungi Foundation, The Fungal Conservation Pledge was introduced at #COP16. bit.ly/3Vl9GHL

What scares me about natural disasters like #earthquakes is how unreliable the notification system seems to be. Why are half of the people notified and the other half get no messages? Is it about phone brands, networks? Is it about settings on the phones? Is it about authorizing localization?

Molecular evolution of a reproductive barrier in maize and related species Three cross-incompatibility loci each control a distinct reproductive barrier in domesticated maize ( Zea mays ssp. mays ) and its wild teosinte relatives. These three loci, Teosinte crossing barrier ...

new preprint from the lab! Elli Cryan, coadvised but the inimitable @spicybotrytis.bsky.social, does a deep dive into the GA incompatibility loci in maize, finding complex haplotypes, overturning evolutionary origins, and discovering a paramutation system! A 🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Is the future of French cheese at stake? Earlier this year, cheese fans panicked following the publication of new research on essential cheesemaking moulds, certain the end was nigh for beloved Brie and Camembert.

bbc.com/travel/artic... 🧀 🍄‍🟫

A butternut squash cut in half. The inside is of a beautiful smooth orange color. In the center are orange fibers and seeds

I have been in North America for 10 years but I don't have #thanksgiving traditions nor family to share a full meal with. However, I really love pumpkin pie. Here is how it is starting this morning. Thankful for this beautiful butternut squash

join.slack.com/t/internatio... I can't garantee how active and helpful it is right now though. Just know it was back in 2020

Twitter page for the International Scholars in the US, a slack channel to share news on immigration

The slack seems to still be active.

What helped during the last admin was a slack for international scholars across institutions, so that we knew pretty fast what was going on. Also exchanged names of immigration lawyers, advices, news. Made things a bit easier, removed a tiny bit of the burden and it felt less alone