What is the origin of South Africa's invading #mushrooms?
The 'fly agaric' is the famous red-and-white-spotted mushroom of fairy tales. But like all good stories, this fairy tale has a dark twist: the mushroom is invasive on multiple continents, including in Africa.
youtu.be/ILLT154Byw0
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What an honor and privilege to organize #fungal26 with the one and only Meritxell Riquelme! Thank you fungal community and @genetics-gsa.bsky.social for making this such a great meeting !
What a way to end #fungal26
We laughed and we cried and we learned so much
A great reminder to look back and reflect on the past
It can light the way to the future
Thank you Nancy Keller for being a light 🕯️ in the field
The research team behind this paper! Image taken at the amazing Kruger national park in South Africa.
Huge thanks to my South African and American co-authors! This project was born from a National Science Foundation (NSF) workshop in late 2022, leading to lifelong connections between many of us in the US and the amazing team at FABI at the University of Pretoria. 5/5
Testing these metabolites for bioactivity showed they effectively kill nematodes, while microbes and flies appear unaffected. This extreme conservation aligns closely with frameworks like the Novel Weapons Hypothesis developed in plant and insect invasion ecology. 4/5
We identified Europe as the origin of the South African populations. Surprisingly, despite its long history in a novel environment, the fungus has not lost any biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). Mass spec showed a highly conserved profile. Only 13 of 273 molecular families were unique to SA. 3/5
Figure from the publication showing documented records of A. muscaria in 1950 vs 2022. Overall the number of sightings has sharply increased in recent decades. Imaged on bottom is a sketch of an A. muscaria sighted in South Africa reflecting widespread awareness of the fungus in this country.
While invasive plants get a lot of attention, invasive mushrooms are often overlooked. To reconstruct the history of A. muscaria in South Africa, we sequenced 24 genomes from both hemispheres (prior to our study, only a single genome from the USA had been sequenced). 2/5
Our new paper on the evolution and chemical ecology of the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria; aka the Super Mario mushroom 🍄) in the Global South is out now in New Phytologist. Read the full paper here: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🧵 1/5
Do you work with the Aspergillus fumigatus model isolates Af293 or CEA10? If so, we want to collaborate with you! In return for your lab's participation we will sequence your strain for free and provide co-authorship on the final paper.
Learn more here: asp-fumi-seq-project-2025.vercel.app
Thanks Rauf!
Thanks Mark! Happy I get to stay with my Madison colleagues
(6/x) And that this fall I will be starting my own interdisciplinary postdoctoral research program at UW-Madison that will be at the intersection of proteomics, genomics, and natural products (managing my own budget and everything 🥹).
(5/x) All of that to say, I’m happy to announce that I am now Dr. Nickles (PhD).
(4/x) Weeks prior I was questioning if I was going to have to quit science altogether. Am just overwhelmed and beyond grateful for this opportunity. I can’t thank Dr. Nancy Keller and Dr. Milton Drott enough for their mentorship.
(3/x) The day of my defense, 55 min before it was to start, I got an email from UW-Madison notifying me that the school is giving me 250k to start my own research program under the mentorship of two amazing professors. All on a proposal I CAME UP WITH AND WROTE on antimicrobial drug discovery.
(2/x) I had been trying to obtain a postdoc or industry science position for the last 8 months. Several opportunities had been taken away from me from federal cuts to science. Nearly 100 applications later I went into my PhD defense bittersweet that I was graduating but into nothing.
(1/x) Yesterday will go down as one of the most monumental of my life.
Flight attendant: Is there a doctor on the plane?
Me: Yes, but I'm not that kind of…
Flight attendant: The pilots want to know about marine CO₂ removal and its role as a climate solution.
Me: AT LAST!
Thanks Dan !!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
new preprint on predicting antifungal drug resistance in yeasts is out!
Nice catch at thanks for clarifying. I do mean CDT!
3. The invasion of Amanita muscaria 🍄 into South Africa, viewed through a natural product lens! I'll discuss its geographic origins & the role its specialized metabolites may have played in its global success as an invader. (in revision)
2. The stepwise evolution of a highly unusual ICS-NRPS-like hybrid megasynthase! This fun story started with a targeted search into lichen BGC biodiversity, leading us to uncover the evolutionary origins of this 'one-enzyme' metabolic pathway now found in ~30% of Ascomycetes. (in preparation)
1. The evolution and diversity of a new class of fungal natural products that I characterized in 2023 (isocyanide synthase BGCs), where I showed they're the 5th most common BGC class in fungi! academic.oup.com/nar/article-...
Flyer showing the title and talk time for my dissertation. Location: MSB 1420. Date: May 28th @10am CST
Hello friends and colleagues! I'm giving my public defense on May 28th from 10-11am CST.
Zoom link: uwmadison.zoom.us/j/99000991657
I'll be talking about the three different first-author papers from my PhD. For sneak previews of those chapters scroll down for the thread! 👇
New publication with the Huttenlocher Lab! Led by PhD candidate Nayanna Mercado Soto, we used zebrafish to study burn wound infections with Candida albicans & Aspergillus fumigatus, showing the innate immune response is highly conserved across fungal species. #fungi journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
OH HELL YA NOT ANYMORE YIPPIIIIEEEEEEE
How it feels being a Wisconsin Susan Crawford voter waiting for the election results
Excited to share that work from my PhD is now available in @natmetabolism.bsky.social! Here, we uncover a link between heme production, BCAA metabolism, and thermogenesis—implicating heme synthesis in #aging, #obesity, and #T2D.
Link to paper: urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...
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