Feels like this paper on protein-templated DNA synthesis by a natural enzyme warrants some comment.
So here's a 🧵. /1
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The point of the university as a concept is that it's been here for a thousand years and meant to be here another thousand. Turning education over to producing what the market needed five years ago is never going to work well.

Thank you Martin!

Congrats to Iris and the co-authors 🥳 this is a massive study, so great to see it out!

thanks!

Thank you!!

thanks!

Thank you Bart!!

Thanks!

Thank you!!

Annual photo of my OG pet lichen that started growing on my balcony railing six years ago.

A door with a name tag. The tag has a logo with the text SciLifeLab. Below is my name and text "Assistant Professor. Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences. Stockholm University". Through the glass wall you can see the office in a state of disarray

Still cannot fully believe it, but today is officially my first day as a PI at @scilifelab.se and Stockholm University! The lab is open, time to fill it with science..
#newPI

This. A thousand times this.

The world's academic systems are in some bizarre competition regarding which ones can, structurally speaking, feed the most young scholars' lives into the woodchipper.

Transposable elements hitchhike on Starships across fungal genomes - Nature Communications Large mobile genetic elements known as Starships act as vehicles for transferring transposable elements (TEs) between fungi. Here, Griem-Krey et al. show that these ‘hitchhiking’ TEs can drive rapid e...

Now out!
We show that TEs can be horizontally transferred between fungal species via Starships. Once transferred, these TEs can become active, changing the genome organization and affecting the lifestyle of the recipient fungus.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@oggenfussursula.bsky.social #TEsky

Lichen Photobionts Lab Biology, Ecology & Evolution of Lichen Photobionts

Check up my new brand site about my research in lichen photobionts!

onutbrannstrom.net

Some reflections on #Fungal26 This was a great meeting as always but set against some turbulent times of course, which meant many regular attendees were not present. This thread is mainly for them. However, the proportion of first-time attendees was very high and very international. #Fungal26 1/15

Lichen fungal effectors are potentially targeted to algal chloroplasts ⁦‪@puginiercamille.bsky.social ‬⁩ #Fungal26

And that's a wrap for #EESSymbiosis. Huge thanks to the organizers: @berasymbionts.bsky.social, @hassansalem.bsky.social, @floravincent.bsky.social, and Tom Richards! I love going to symbiosis conferences, looking forward to reconnect with symbiosis folks at future occasions!
@events.embl.org

FEBS Press The acquisition of bacterial endosymbionts by ancient host cells followed by massive adaptation of the partners gave rise to mitochondria and plastids. Today, various systems with younger and less in...

The final talk of the conference 😢 @evanowack.bsky.social on the transformation of endosymbiont into an organelle, touching on protein import systems and the host complementation of proteins lost by the symbiont. Read a recent review here febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
#EESSymbiosis

Thank you for the great conversations and inspiring ideas during yesterday poster's session at #EESSymbiosis 🙆🏻‍♀️🧬

Next, @vectorgen.bsky.social on engineering an obligate nutritional vertically-transmitted endosymbiosis between mosquitos and E.coli. Lots of tweaking to make sure the bacteria go into ovaries and to make display systems to work, in order to have a tractable model of endosymbiosis
#EESSymbiosis

Next, Kaitlyn Ho on the extracellular chemosynthetic symbionts that live in mussels in specialized channels and provide the host with nutrition. Removing the symbionts by starvation leads to reorganization of the host cytoskeleton
#EESSymbiosis

Next, Junbo Luan on the interplay between whitefly, Rickettsia endosymbiont, begomovirus, and an entomopathogenic fungus. Both the virus and the bacteria induce host defences against the fungus, which in the case of the virus comes from increased chitin synthesis.
#EESSymbiosis

Next, @nancy-moran.bsky.social on the interaction between Buchnera and its aphid host. SyeA, an effector predicted to interact with Rho1 GTPase, is secreted during the host colonization. Knocking it down disrupts the aphid's embryo development
More here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #EESSymbiosis

Genetic potential for aerobic respiration and denitrification in globally distributed respiratory endosymbionts - Nature Communications In this study, the authors report and analyze four complete genomes of respiratory endosymbionts to show that they carry the potential to breathe both oxygen and nitrogen oxides providing energy to th...

Next, @einzeller.bsky.social on respiratory endosymbionts in anaerobic ciliates. Diversity of the host and the endosymbiont shows congruent phylogenies. Read more about the system www.nature.com/articles/s41... #EESSymbiosis

Cockroach bacteriocytes migrate into the ovaries for vertical transmission of the bacterial endosymbiont Blattabacterium - Zoological Letters Zoological Letters - Diverse insect groups are obligately associated with and dependent on specific microorganisms as essential mutualistic partners that are usually maintained in specialized cells...

Next, Tomohito Noda on symbiotic organs of cockroaches. Roaches' fat bodies contain symbiotic and non-symbiotic cells, which is great because we can compare them, in this case using snRNA-seq. Read more about the system here link.springer.com/article/10.1...
#EESSymbiosis

Nitrogen-fixing organelle in a marine alga Symbiotic interactions were key to the evolution of chloroplast and mitochondria organelles, which mediate carbon and energy metabolism in eukaryotes. Biological nitrogen fixation, the reduction of ab...

Final day of the conference! Jonathan Zehr on nitroplasts, N2-fixing cyanobacterial endosymbionts in an alga, turned an organelle with its division synchronized with other organelles. PSI is involved in N2 fixation. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#EESSymbiosis

And finally Gengjun Zhong on the interplay between the whitefly, its endosymbionts, and the fungal pathogen Beauveria
#EESSymbiosis

Next, Yang Yang on the endosymbiont of whitefly, Hamiltonella and Rickettsia
#EESSymbiosis