Jobb

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...

Evolutionary histories of effector proteins secreted by fungal pathogens to mediate plant colonization remain largely elusive. While most functionally characterized effectors modulate plant immunity, ...

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...

Nature Communications - Giant transposons, known as ‘Starships’, mediate horizontal gene transfer between fungal genomes. Here, Sato et al. show that Starships occupy genome regions...

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.

In this Consensus Statement, the authors outline strategies for processing, analysing and interpreting low-biomass microbiome samples, and provide recommendations to minimize contaminants.