We hypothesized the DNAPs recognize their own plasmid due to the copy number differences between each VLE. DNAPs are encoded and translated as a fusion with a terminal protein, which binds the inverted repeats at the ends of the VLEs. We believe the TPs provide this specificity!

So much good has come from jumping into the unknown and having an open mind for whatever you may find. Funding bodies should encourage blue skies research. Science has always been about funding ideas that are not necessarily ‘profitable’, creating new methods, therapies, and fields of study.

I’m extremely grateful to our funders, the @erc.europa.eu, for allowing us to explore this area. At the risk of sounding preachy, I want to encourage all researchers to set aside time for looking at that ‘weird’ thing you came across. (10/10)

These plasmids have multiple potential antifungal agents with novel mechanisms of action. Additionally, the idea that multiple VLEs can independently replicate with their own DNAPs in the same fungal cell gives a potential avenue for expanding biotechnological applications like OrthoRep (9/10)

With further database mining, we have discovered ‘constellations’ of plasmids in much older fungal groups, specifically, the Zoopagomycota and Mucoromycota. These constellations have illuminated the linear plasmids’ (and zymocin-like toxins’) introduction to the Ascomycota. (8/10)

So, where did all of these come from? Are there more examples of them? Could a really old group of fungi have donated these killer plasmids to the Ascomycetes (budding yeasts and filamentous ascomycetes), or were they simply vertically inherited? They had to have come from somewhere (7/10)

Here, we found killer plasmids that appear to have ‘crash-landed’ into the nuclear genomes of these fungi. In some cases, these toxins are under positive selection in major plant fungal pathogens, like Fusarium, which have led to severe crop loss:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... (6/10)

Notably, this demonstrated that it was likely the ancestor of all budding yeasts encoded the toxins. We decided to look for killer plasmids in the sister subphylum to the Saccharomycotina (budding yeasts), the Pezizomycotina, which contains well-known fungi, like Aspergillus, Penicillium, etc.(5/10)

My first publication demonstrated these killer plasmids and their toxins were found in far more species than just the 4 previously known (out of ~1500 known species). Through mining reads from the SRA, we discovered 45 novel toxins, many of which were functional: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... (4/10)

My PhD thesis grappled with a virus-like element (VLE) toxin system that some budding yeasts use to compete with other fungi. The VLEs encoding toxins are killer plasmids. The most famous example is in Kluyvermoyces lactis, and its killer plasmid encodes the toxin, zymocin (see killing below) (3/10)

A common question that all daydreamers and scientists (one and the same) have is “where does this come from?” Or “shouldn’t there be more examples of this?” Similar to looking at the stars in the sky and asking, “Is it really just us? That would be incredibly boring…” (2/10)

Thank you!