Mark McMullan

Genomic and physiological signatures of adaptation in pathogenic fungi - Nature Communications Emerging fungal pathogens have detrimental impacts on crops, animals, and humans, however little is known about their transition to a pathogenic lifestyle. This study demonstrates that the transition ...

What enables a fungus to invade a mammal host? @marco-guerreiro.bsky.social unravels signatures of translation adaptation among pathogenic and non-pathogenic species of Trichosporonales. See more: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Distribution of Gene Tree Topologies with Duplication, Loss, and Coalescence https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.19.700405v1

Mutualistic microbes drive niche expansion yet constrain diversification https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.14.699472v1

Gene function predicts divergence across molecular levels https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.13.699300v1

Blinded by the lights? Re-examining the adaptive role of transposable elements in plants with population genomics Transposable elements (TEs) are ubiquitous components of the genome whose mobility can be triggered by environmental stress and influenced by genotype…

Have we been overstating the role of transposable elements in adaptation to local or rapidly changing environmental conditions? Happy to share my (somewhat unpopular?) opinion paper on this matter: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Thanks to those who already shared the link!

‘Magical’ galaxy frogs disappear after reports of photographers destroying their habitats Researcher in Kerala rainforest sounds alarm after being told frogs had died after being handled by humans

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Pangenomics transforms evolutionary biology | Royal Society This Theo Murphy meeting organised by Dr Joana Meier, Dr Henry North and Dr Charlotte Wright, will showcase cutting-edge pangenome tools, applied uses of pangenomes which are transforming health and a...

Are you excited about pangenomics? If so, join us in Edinburgh on 8-9th June to discuss the latest methods & insights from using these approaches across biodiversity! More details here:

royalsociety.org/science-even...

Organised together with @henrylnorth.bsky.social & @joanameier.bsky.social!

Spent last week at the microscope 🔬✨, and seeing arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi up close for the first time—hyphae, arbuscules, vesicles—was absolutely mind-blowing. Small but mighty partners of plant roots 🌿. Sharing a few of my favourite shots.
#Mycorrhiza #fungi

Big congratulations @tobybarilbio.bsky.social!

Please check out and share our final version of the transposon mobilization work in a fungal pathogen - out now in Nature Communications

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mushroom plots to visualise gain and loss on a phylogenetic tree A tutorial on how to visualise gene gain and loss on a phylogenetic tree

A quick tutorial blog on a method I haven't seen before to plot gene gain/loss from e.g. CAFE5 across a phylogeny - and clearly shows I always have fungi on the mind 🤓🍄
#rstats #ggplot2
rowena-h.github.io/data-visuali...

@tobybarilbio.bsky.social and I are very excited to release MycoMobilome! A very extensive effort to discover, QC and annotate TEs across the fungal kingdom.

👉 Ready-to-use for your own genome with a simple tutorial!
👉 Metadata about TEs discovered in your genome!
👉 Contribute and get recognition!

Super excited to see our bioRxiv paper out! It furthers our understanding of an FHB resistance locus in timopheevii with some DON resistance too!

Combatting wheat take-all disease with in-field and synthetic microbial communities 4-year Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership (NRPDTP) PhD

PHD: What does an ‘optimal’ community of #bacteria and #fungi look like for #pathogen suppression?

That's a key question to explore in this fully-funded #PhDproject with @neilhall.bsky.social, @mcmullan0.bsky.social and @rowenahill.bsky.social at the Earlham Institute.

Exploring niche cell–cell communication through alternative splicing 4-year Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership (NRPDTP) PhD

PHD: Are you interested in gene regulation, #immune function, or tech development?

We have a fully-funded 4-year #PhDproject with @whatchamacaulay.bsky.social at the Earlham Institute and @tiagocluis.bsky.social at Imperial looking at niche cell–cell communication.

➡️ buff.ly/M7u6thJ

📣 New @biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social preprint, another joint-venture of @wolki95.bsky.social & @antonkraege.bsky.social, co-directed by @nicksnelders.bsky.social. Here’s a 🧵

Daniel Gibbs Lab Welcome to the lab website of Professor Daniel Gibbs @ University of Birmingham

We are advertising a PhD project investigating a cellular mechanism that ensures protein quality control during mRNA translation in plants. Please get in touch on here or via email if you are interested and I can provide further details!

Lab website: sites.google.com/site/danielg...

Simons Postdoctoral Fellowships in Plant Biology Simons Postdoctoral Fellowships in Plant Biology on Simons Foundation

Great new postdoc fellowship for foundational plant research.
If you’re into genetics and genomics of plant reproductive evolution or adaptive convergence (incl in the cool and charismatic nightshades!) I’d be happy to talk about possible projects!
www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

Working alongside colleagues at @earlhaminst.bsky.social , @johninnescentre.bsky.social , @dsw-isp.bsky.social , @norwichmicro.bsky.social , and @rothamsted.bsky.social.

Do get in touch to find out more

Combatting wheat take-all disease with in-field and synthetic microbial communities

PhD studentship
Come help us understand the wheat rhizosphere at the Earlham Institute 🦠

Working at the interface of fungal antagonists & pathogens (@rowenahill.bsky.social @neilhall.bsky.social ), host genetic diversity (Simon Griffiths -JIC) and bacterial community diversity (Jacob Malone -JIC)

Professorship in plant genetics.
The Botanical Institute at Kiel University is advertising a W2 professorship. Great opportunity to do plant research in the north of Germany. See:
www.berufungen.uni-kiel.de/de/dateien/o...

A genetic map of human metabolism across the allele frequency spectrum - United Kingdom Study design

A genetic map of human metabolism across the allele frequency spectrum

https://www.europesays.com/uk/474140/

Study design The UKB is a prospective cohort study from the UK that contains more than 500,000 volunteers…#uk #news #uknews

A common bracket fungus on the side of a tree

Xylaria fungus growing out of a tree stump

Small cap mushrooms surrounded by fallen leaves and grass in a woodland

🍄 Today marks #UKFungusDay where we get to celebrate the weird and wonderful kingdom of Fungi.

As well as being fundamental to a healthy ecosystem, and often fascinating to spot, #Fungi can be devastating to plant and animal populations.

Was a pleasure to contribute a small part to this massive WGS effort of Kew's fungarium! @estergaya.bsky.social @rbgkew.bsky.social

Check out the paper @newphyt.bsky.social 👉 doi.org/10.1111/nph.70472

New OA Article: "Enhancing local meiotic crossovers in Arabidopsis and maize through juxtaposition of heterozygous and homozygous regions" rdcu.be/eDWJI

With News & Views: "Diversity favoured: heterozygosity attracts crossovers" rdcu.be/eDWKQ

It was a delight to have Guillaume Delhaye and Torda Varga (@rbgkew.bsky.social) at @earlhaminst.bsky.social last week, talking to a packed Norwich Research Park audience about mushroom-forming and mycorrhizal fungi from molecule to ecosystem! 🍄🧬🌳

@neilhall.bsky.social @norwichmicro.bsky.social

Our editors write:

- Wheat immunity: "Unlocking yellow rust resistance" rdcu.be/eBbSJ about rdcu.be/eBbT0

- Auxin signalling: "A rack for the hook" rdcu.be/eBbTg about www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Figure showing the experimental overview as a graphic. Remaining alt text taken from the figure caption in the paper: (A) we sampled flies from six wild orchard populations ranging from Homestead, FL, to Lancaster, MA, and established isofemale lines in the laboratory. (B) We returned to a focal orchard in Media, PA, at early- and late-season timepoints and collected flies to capture evolutionary patterns following winter and summer conditions. (C) We then seeded outdoor mesocosms (N = 9) with an outbred population originating from early-season collections in Media, PA, and sampled flies at the end of summer (mid-season) and fall (late-season) to determine if seasonal patterns are recapitulated in experimental populations controlled for migration, drift, and cryptic population structure. (D) Across each wild or experimental context, we sampled flies, established lines in the lab, completed common garden treatment to remove environmental effects, and scored females for abdominal pigmentation. We also conducted pooled DNA sequencing on additional flies sampled from each population to map genomic patterns for candidate pigmentation SNPs.

How predictably does complex trait adaptation proceed over space and time in wild populations?
doi.org/10.1093/evle...

Now in @evolletters.bsky.social by @skylerberardi.bsky.social, @paulrschmidt.bsky.social et al.

📷: Dr. Rush Dhillon

Phylogenetic networks empower biodiversity research | PNAS Reticulate evolution has long been recognized as a key mechanism that contributes to genetic and trait diversity. With the widespread availability ...

Advances in computational methods for inferring networks from #genome-scale data and guidelines for deriving biological insights from #phylogenetic networks www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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 crucial for infection in a plant pathogeni...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Really nice. Especially nice RIP result linked to ancestral sex hypotheses. Which then links nicely to plastic genomic regions and adaptation in the face of asexual reproduction.

k-mer-based diversity scales with population size proxies more than nucleotide diversity in a meta-analysis of 98 plant species Abstract. A key prediction of neutral theory is that the level of genetic diversity in a population should scale with population size. However, as was note

Hey, Miles' @milesroberts.bsky.social beautiful paper showing that sequence diversity missed by standard methods contributes to Lewontin's paradox is officially published in @evolletters.bsky.social. academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...