News

Hanna and Peter Jan went to Lund to attend the Fungal Genetics symposium arranged by The Mendelian Society and the Royal Physiographic Society of Lund. In association to the symposium, Dr N. Louise was awarded a prestigious medal. Hanna gave a talk and the symposium, and the trip included visits to the groups of Edith Hammer (for which Peter Jan gave a talk) and Dimitri Floudas. We had a great trip full of fungal genetics and networking!

As one of few mycologists, Mattias went to the Evolution in Sweden-meeting in Linköping. Here he showed the first version of his model of mating system shift and cooperation.

Good news! Gulnara got a two-year scholarship from the Wenner-Gren foundation to join us for working on lichens: She will dive into how different symbionts recognize each other and the role that immunity plays in the symbiosis. The yellow Xanthoria will be her model lichen. She will start after summer of 2025.

We are hosting the first Mycology Nordics conference this week. This meeting is not just a scientific meeting, it’s also a vision to generate a future network of mycologists from the Nordics with the research interest in ecology, evolution and genetics of fungi. The interest for the meeting was greater than we had hoped for! - so now we have about 100 participants from around the Nordics joining us. Lots of work, and lots of new friends! Go, mycology, go!

Fungal genomes harbor NOD-Like receptors (NLRs), which are analogous to the innate immune receptors found in animals, plants and bacteria. We collaborated with Pierre Gladieux and his group for an investigation of the variability of fungal NLR repertoires and the underlying determinants, in the ascomycete order Sordariales. Read the preprint here.

Mario got his master thesis work accepted for publication in IMA fungus. A nice contribution to the international resource of fungi isolated from nature, and data showing really cool small fruiting bodies of Hericium coralloides formed in the lab! Soon it will be printed in the journal, so you can check it out.

Markus got a grant from The Royal Physiographic Society of Lund to experimentally test for inheritance patterns in Flammulina velupites. Congratulations, Markus!

Hanna got the project grant from the Swedish Research Foundation (VR) to continue working on the basidiomycete germline sequestration! Great news!

Markus got the manuscript ”Evolution of a bipolar sexual compatibility system in Marasmius” accepted for publication in Mycologia. A project started long a go - and finished recently. We show that Marasmius obeys to the typical Agaricomycete way to evolve bipolarity from tetrapolarity - by loss of mating compatibility function of the P/R locus.

Today our lab had an outing in Fjällnora with the rest of the HumFun-network, a late-fall-mushroom-foray followed by sauna and swimming in the lake. And a BBQ. Not so many mushrooms found, but a lot of fun!

Today Mattias Siljestam joins the lab as a postdoc. He’s an expert in mathematical modeling to answer evolutionary questions, which adds an important piece to the combined expertise of our team. Welcome Mattias!

Today we have Praissy Zefi joining the lab. She will use her bioinformatic skills to help out with the Verticillium-project. Welcome, Zefi!

Gulnara’s paper on the beautiful yellow lichen, Xanthoria parietina, is now online on biorxiv. A very comprehensive study on the metagenome and metatranscriptome of the lichen at different developmental stages, shows much hidden diversity at all taxonomic levels. Read the paper here.

This week, our group attends the International Mycological Congress in Maastricht. We find out what’s new in mycology and also present our own research: Hanna gives a keynote and Noah gives a session talk on the genomics of Chaetomiaceae. Markus, Jesper, Boel, Petter and Marion show posters. And, of course, we all take this opportunity to hang out with our old and new friends and colleagues.

By generating genomes from the mycorrhizal lineage Inocybaceae, and comparing them to genomes of their saprotrophic relatives, we add to the bulk of literature on the topic: lots of genomic changes apparently occur just at the transition to the symbiotic lifestyle! Read the paper by Kalsoom Khan et al. here.

Ivar is in Montreal - joining the 3rd Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology! He gives a talk about his cool findings on the Podospora centromeres at the “within organism conflicts” - session, and also brought a poster.

Today our group participated in Blodomloppet Stockholm 2024. This is a running race to promote blood donations. Our team ran a combined distance of more than 100 km!

Today Mario Walthert successfully defended his master thesis “Isolation and Cultivation of Fungi from Swedish Nature”! It turned out to be a very cool study generating a resource of cultures of edible mushrooms from the Stockholm-Uppsala area. Congratulations, Mario!

Today we welcome Peter Jan Vonk as the newest member of the group! Peter Jan has a background in molecular biology of mushroom-forming fungi and will join us in the work to determine the structure and function of the germline in Marasmius oreades.

Hanna participated in Gothenburg science festival, talking about fungal life cycles together with Leif Anderson from Gothenburg. See the discussion here.

Hanna served as opponent in Copenhagen, when Guangshou Li defended his thesis “Taxonomy and adaptations of termite-associated fungi” and visited Michael Poulsen’s research group.

After a very comprehensive and constructive review process, the paper on factors driving diversification in the cyanobacterium Microcoleus is finally published in Nature communications. Lots of genomes and lots of hard work! Read the paper here!

One more piece of work from Lore’s PhD-thesis is published in Genome Biology and Evolution. Here, we present chromosome-level assemblies of the remaining species of the Podospora species complex and make an attempt to resolve their phylogenetic relationships. Lore’s work has really contributed to making Podospora a fine model system for the study of genome evolution! Read the paper here!

Marieke van der Poel started as a master student in the lab! She will delve into the genomes of Neurospora sitophila and in particular investigate spore killer resistance factors. Welcome!

Petter successfully presented and defended his half-time PhD-report. He got very useful feedback from the external reviewer Francisco Nascimento from our home Department here at SU. Well done, Petter and thanks Frasse.

Hanna was elected as member in the class of biology, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Congratulations, Hanna!