📰 Researchers at @tulaneu.bsky.social have discovered that if animal cells gain an extra set of chromosomes, they activate a stress signaling pathway that causes them to become more mobile and capable of engulfing neighboring cells with normal chromosome numbers. www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Harnessing random peptide mixtures to combat multidrug-resistant fungal infections | mBio The rising prevalence of invasive fungal infections, particularly among immunocompromised individuals, has become a critical public health concern. However, antifungal drug development has not kept pace with this growing need, and treatment options remain limited to a small number of drug classes. The emergence of multidrug-resistant fungal pathogens, such as Candida auris, further exacerbates this crisis by reducing the efficacy of existing therapeutics and increasing the risk of treatment failure. In this study, we evaluate the antifungal potential of FK20, a random peptide mixture (RPM) composed of L-phenylalanine and L-lysine. FK20 displays potent activity against C. auris and other clinically relevant Candida species, impairs biofilm formation, and exhibits synergy with caspofungin. Importantly, FK20 limits the emergence of resistance and demonstrates therapeutic efficacy in a murine model of systemic candidiasis. These findings establish RPMs as a promising new class of antifungals with broad-spectrum activity and clinical potential against drug-resistant fungal infections.

🚨A random solution to a growing fungal threat🚨
Our work on random peptide mixtures reveals potent antifungal activity against multidrug-resistant pathogens like C. auris, with low resistance potential and strong biofilm activity.
Now out in mBio!
Congrats to John and Yael for the fantastic work 👏

50 medical mycologists put their shoulder behind an action plan to mitigate the rising threat of antifungal drug resistance. Check out in Nature Medicine. @youngecmm.bsky.social @ecmmcandidaiv.bsky.social @ishamycology.bsky.social @bsmm-meeting.bsky.social @mrccmm.bsky.social

We enjoyed hosting a visit from Robin May who entertained everybody with a seminar about his life and career as a lab scientist & government scientific advisor. From lab coat to bowler hat!@robinmay9.bsky.social @mrccmm.bsky.social @youngecmm.bsky.social @bsmm-meeting.bsky.social @ukhsa.bsky.social

Early Career Faculty Program | Freeman Hrabowski Scholars | HHMI The Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program offers comprehensive support to outstanding early career faculty committed to scientific excellence in their own research, and to fostering labs that expand the ...

@hhmi-science.bsky.social's
#FreemanHrabowski Scholars Program offers early career faculty up to $10M over 10 yrs, plus salary & benefits

Stable, sustained support can transform your career:

Senior Postdoc? This year's competition has a program for you too. Applications open 11/3! bit.ly/4vhC0LA

When career anxiety becomes gameplay: lessons from China’s ‘young-faculty simulator’ A popular online game simulates life as an academic — and throws the challenges of being an early-career researcher into sharp relief.

LOL - wish there is an English version.

When career anxiety becomes gameplay: lessons from China’s ‘young-faculty simulator’ www.nature.com/articles/d41...

🗓Full list of invited speakers for the 2027 GRC Immunology of Fungal Infections is now online.
🍄Check out the fantastic line-up and get your application in early - this meeting is typically oversubscribed! Lots of opportunities for talks from the abstracts
www.grc.org/immunology-o...

Each publication in a #Microbio26 journal helps fund 4 student travel grants. Please publish with us if you can!

How important do you feel discovery research and ‘basic’ science is for understanding disease? Well, I have a little bit of a biased view on the topic, since I'm a basic scientist myself. The lab has made more and more discoveries with very strong therapeutic implications, and often people ask me why we are not pursuing these further ourselves. Part of it is that I think about this very much as an ecosystem. People have different skills – I have colleagues who are very good at the application side of things and I have other colleagues, including people in my lab, who are very good at the basic science. There are a lot of very smart people at every stage in the ecosystem and, sometimes, we have to acknowledge that we can't all be experts in every step. A lot of basic science discoveries will end up having profound implications in the clinic – if you don't have the full imagination about how to get it there, that's okay, because you're still a very important piece of the jigsaw puzzle and other people can help. If the basic science discoveries didn't exist, then it's quite possible that the well would run dry. We cannot simply rely on the idea that the therapies currently in clinical trials are going to be enough because we already know that – for diseases, such as cancer, and with rapidly evolving viruses – there needs to be a constant influx of new ideas to stay ahead of the arms race. I'd also make a plug for the fact that, ultimately, we are all interested in human disease, but disease research in humans is not ethical or possible. This is why creating and studying model organisms in a high-throughput, low-investment context is incredibly important. We cannot just say ‘okay, we're going to stop work on anything that is not related to human research’, because – actually – it's all relevant to humans.

Do you think basic science is particularly threatened by cuts to funding? Science itself is quite uncertain. We do experiments wondering if they will even work. It's discovery, and you don't know where it's going to lead. It could lead to a billion-dollar company, something like mRNA vaccines or CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, or it could simply be something that interests you. Sometimes it might appear esoteric from the outside, but there are very smart people dedicated to this work. We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that most of this work is paid for by taxpayers, but funding uncertainty creates a very unstable foundation. If the foundations are weak, people are going to get much more conservative about the science that they're doing and worry that ‘blue-skies research’ is not worth pursuing because it won't get funded. And that would be a mistake because all innovation in science really originates from blue-skies, basic research. The second thing that uncertainty does is send a message to our young trainees – who are our future – that this is not a career option that will provide professional and personal stability. I worry that this kind of uncertainty will mean we lose an entire generation of people, and that would be a loss we might not be able to overcome.

I was interviewed by @katiepickup.bsky.social recently for @dmmjournal.bsky.social. This has a little bit of my background, a little bit on science and mentoring, and a little bit (ok, more than a little bit) on funding in science.

Check it out at: journals.biologists.com/dmm/article/...

Please RT. :)

Assistant or Associate Professor (Research and Education) - School of Biosciences - 107106 - Grade 8 or 9 Evidence of a developing track record in publishing work of high academic quality and impact is essential, as is an emerging portfolio (or clear potential) of external research funding. Applicants mus...

Dear fungal friends: my School have Assistant/Associate Professor openings for mycology! UoB has a lot to offer, and UK fungal community is more than amazing - join us!
edzz.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

The open letter from UKRI last night was basically a word soup with no new information or clarity on the situation, and even more concerningly, no sincere apology for how it’s been handled and communicated to the U.K. academic community.

🗓 SAVE THE DATE! The 2027 GRC Immunology of Fungal Infections will take place Jan 17-22 in California. Watch this space for program updates! Need a visa to attend? Apply now to secure your spot early.
#fungalconferences #immunosky 🧪🍄
www.grc.org/immunology-o...

Update on UKRI funding situation.

Summary: it is mostly bad news, and with significant uncertainties around new funding model.

Fungal Pathogens: Emerging Threats and Future Challenges | Keystone Symposia Join us at the Keystone Symposia on Fungal Pathogens: Emerging Threats and Future Challenges, January 2026, in Breckenridge, with field leaders!

🎊 Happy new year! I'm looking forward to an exciting 2026 filled with great conferences and science! First up is the Keystone #KSFUNGALPATH26 in just under 2 weeks - full program now online:
www.keystonesymposia.org/conferences/...

How I confronted my growing cynicism about academia—and rekindled my sense of purpose “Maintaining hope doesn’t mean ignoring hardships or naïvely expecting things to work out,” this professor writes

How I confronted my growing cynicism about academia—and rekindled my sense of purpose | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Extensive horizontal transfer of transposable elements shapes fungal mobilomes Romeijn et al. reveal that horizontal transposon transfer is widespread in fungi, contributing up to 70% of transposon content in some taxa. The authors uncover thousands of events across diverse line...

Extensive horizontal transfer of transposable elements shapes fungal mobilomes

@currentbiology.bsky.social by @jromeijn.bsky.social et al from @mfseidl.bsky.social

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Done my 8-pages scientific proposal (1xsummary + 5xproposal + 2xfgures) for a grant and ended with a 146-pages application package. so not real.

There are no words to describe how excited and honored I am to take on the role. Already had such amazing support from the plant pathology community in Switz and cannot wait to grow the team further and see how far we can get in tackling our fungal foes. Look out for jobs starting in May 2026!

We warmly welcome Dr. Megan McDonald as Associate Professor of Plant Disease Dynamics. Her research on fungal diseases in crops will strengthen our expertise and collaborations across plant sciences. 🌱

#BSMM2025. Super proud of @alicjaszkolnik.bsky.social giving an amazing talk on molecular platform development for fungal pathogens!!!

Very excited to announce launch of brand new journal npj Fungal Science! As EIC I'm joined by a fantastic board of academic editors from across the mycology field. You can learn more about the journal scope and submit your work here: www.nature.com/npjfungalsci/

Evolution of antifungal resistance in the environment - Nature Microbiology This Review discusses the evolution, emergence and expansion of environmental fungicide and antifungal drug resistance.

A little holiday news:

Evolution of antifungal resistance in the environment www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This started out as a little thought way back in early 2024 between @normanvanrhijn.bsky.social and I, and turned into a full on review! We hope it proves useful to the community.

Exciting new lab alert 🚨 🧪

Today our team from @imibirmingham.bsky.social visit @chadvaleprimary.bsky.social to show our future scientists the microbes living with plants. Big thanks to @sophie-e-powell.bsky.social to lead an amazing talk and Maria, @alicjaszkolnik.bsky.social @roxtoby.bsky.social to help with microscopy.

The Things We'll Never Know, A Science Fair of Canceled Grants

To remain a beacon of progress, the U.S. must support scientists, not silence them. Today, at “The Things We’ll Never Know: A Science Fair of Canceled Grants,” we are learning from scientists about their canceled projects & the impact on American science. #StandUpForScience

it still takes 2 days to recover from a grant rejection. I thought I could do better.

Only one week to go until the abstract submission deadline for Candida and Candidiasis 2025! Make sure to submit your abstract by 15 May 2025 at 23:59 BST. Find out more on our website. microb.io/Candida2025A... #Candida2025

Candida auris is emerging as a prevalent urinary pathogen Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are one of the most common infections, with a subgroup of these infections, catheter-associated UTIs (CAUTIs), accounting for 40% of nosocomial infections. While the ma...

Candida auris is emerging as a prevalent urinary pathogen journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Understanding and predicting microbial evolutionary dynamics - 2025 meeting 26 - 27 November 2025 - Liverpool, UK

Save the date! Understanding and Predicting Microbial Evolutionary Dynamics 2025 will be held on 26-27 November in Liverpool: microb.io/MicroEvo25 #MicroEvo25