Audrey K Ward

In this review, Chieh-Ping Lin, Alberto Geroldi, Nelly Selem @litinice.bsky.social and @ishengtsai.bsky.social analyse #yeasts in fungal #metabarcoding samples from the GlobalFungi database, revealing distinct patterns of distribution across environments 🍄 👇 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

New 📄 🚨! #CellBio is teeming with simulations comprising an extraordinarily high number of components. We argue that model complexity will not automatically lead to a better understanding of biological systems & discuss how modeling practices could be repurposed: arxiv.org/abs/2608.06998 #philsci

Now published from our lab with new and improved data collected from a 30 day freeze - the answer to "how the heck can I cryopreserve this frustrating endosymbiont"? Congrats to @ruthwright.bsky.social and special thanks to #NewPI Slack for the crowdsourced ideas. journals.asm.org/eprint/J8WFT...

If you weren't at the Cellular and Molecular Fungal Biology Gordon Research Conference, I hope this helps you decide to go next time. It's such a great community! starring @grantnickles.bsky.social cinematography by @emmascales.bsky.social

We’re not supposed to post about GRC presentations, but I will reassure the rest of you that yes, even cellular and molecular mycologists all pronounce the word fungi differently. Not to mention species names… #FungalGRC

🚨Proposed OMB regulations could affect federal research funding, international collaborations, publication costs, and more. GSA is urging you to submit public comments by July 13. Learn what's at stake and how to make your voice heard: buff.ly/A2IT1gL

No talk summaries at the Fungal GRS/C, but the GRS attendees do have a mascot we’ve adopted: Behold, the Lobfather! #FungalGRC

NSF is devoting a large chunk of increasingly scarce resources to people who are not affiliated with universities. My first read on this is, it's just corruption. It'll be a lot easier for grifters and politically connected dipshits to get their hands on public cash through this mechanism.

It is no surprise that contamination leads to incorrect conclusions in population genetics studies. @audreykward.bsky.social, @mcmomany.bsky.social, @dbensasson.bsky.social caution that even low-level contamination has a greater impact on analyses than expected. More in #G3journal: buff.ly/kYFXQfM

Super excited to share our lab's work led by PhD student Margot Ruffieux on domestication of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, with a focus on sourdough and baking associated yeast! 🍞

My first paper w/ Matt, about how mRNA and protein levels of the same genes should be expected to coevolve. It was carried over from my PhD at Michigan w/ George Zhang, but started too late to be in my thesis. academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

Maybe not the best phylogeny to use to explain homology. So this pair o' logs are orthologs, but if they arose via duplication and you can recover synteny for one, you could call it a syntelog and the other single log a paralog."

The long-awaited FLASH manuscript is finally out--check out some interesting results on predicting drug resistance in C. tropicalis, C. auris and other yeasts using a unique k-mer based model! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Still mourning #fungal26? Want to celebrate the release of the April 2026 edition of G3? Why not give this a gander? We found impact of low level contamination on population analyses in both Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Aspergillus fumigatus! #mycosky #academicsky

Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us

back from conference! good news: inspired 💡, better idea of how to approach some protocols, experiments to add to research plan for a more complete vision 🥼 bad news: inspired 🌟🕶️, have to rework research plan to incorporate experiments 🧬🧪, steak too juicy 🥩, lobster too buttery 🦞🧈 #academicsky

#Fungal26 need something to read on the flight home? Now obsessed with tRNAs? New Preprints! Genes near tRNAs are enriched in translational machinery: tinyurl.com/zshnf835 Hidden Diversity in Yeast tRNAs: Comparative Genomics and Modification Mapping in a Eukaryotic Subphylum tinyurl.com/3j6f3up2

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

Shout out to the myco-skeeters 🦋 at #fungal26 It's been fun live posting with you! @germhuntermd.bsky.social @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social @audreykward.bsky.social @angusb.bsky.social @hyphaltip.bsky.social @uehlinglab.bsky.social

Next talk in our #fungal26 session on emerging fungal pathogens is Dr Lisa Couper on genomes of environmental isolates of Coccidioides for tracing human infections

Communication continues! Baoye He shares how cross-kingdom 🍄🌱 communication happens with extracellular vesicles 🫧 and RNA trafficking 🚛🧬 #fungal26

Travis Seamons invites us to 👂 listen into some microbial conversations using RNA Addressable Modification 🧬 and barcoding. (Read more here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...) #fungal26

No RNAi, big problems 🧬➡️🛑 Mycoviruses 🦠 interfering with RNAi can make fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans more virulent in mouse models. 🐁😷 Fascinating talk from Jun Huang. #fungal26

Cook your morels and avoid painkillers at night- fungal wisdom at #Fungal26

Jasmine Ono (@jtono.bsky.social) discussing some matchmaking mechanisms gone wrong 😱 💔 Saccharomyces paradoxus and Saccharomyces cerevisiae F1 hybrids are sterile largely due to recombination rejection 🛑✋🏻 due to mis-segregation of chromosomes 🧬➡️❔🤷‍♀️ #fungal26

María Angélica Bravo Núñez uses natural isolates of Saccharomyces cerevisiae 🌳🧫 to understand how aneuploidy and structural variation 🧬🧱 changes over time. Take home message (with some of my own soapboxing): don’t just rely on lab strains - look for natural variation in the wild! 🏕️🍇 #fungal26

Hanne Griem-Krey discussing ✨🚀 Starship-mediated horizontal gene transfer 🧬➡️🧬 of transposable elements in the insect pathogen 🐜😷 Metarhizum anisoplaie. #fungal26

Hey #Fungal26 attendees, vote for your next Fungal Genetics Policy Committee through the conference app! These folks work with @genetics-gsa.bsky.social to organize your conference 🍄

Lluvia Vargas Gastélum shares the fractured 💔 genome 🧬 of the Basidiobolus Why are there so many chromomes!? Could it be the LINES near telomeres? #fungal26

Emile Gluck-Thaler elucidating the mysteries 🔎 🫆 of fungal variation and phenotype using 🚀✨ Starship transposon framework. How do these 🔗 link to and impact fungal evolution? #fungal26

Really, really fascinating talk from the Tsai lab (@ishengtsai.bsky.social) about the fungi Acrodontium living in the mucilage of the carnivorous plant 🪰🪴 ☀️ Drosera - and how it promotes prey digestion! 🍴#fungal26

@evelinesnelders.bsky.social shares work utilizing citizen science 👥🥼🧪 to sample for airborne fungal resistance with Schimmelradar (fungal radar) program 🍄📡 - and some really cool results showing land use is a better predictor for azole resistance! 💪🏻 #fungal26

@lablabella.bsky.social labmate Caroline West sharing some collaborative work with the @morgancarterphd.bsky.social lab exploring 👀💻 codon usage patterns in R. microsporus, its bacterial endosymbiont, and the phages within the bacteria! 🦠🧬🧪 #fungal26

Jack Gregory explores the diversity of endohyphal 🍄 bacteria 🦠 of clinical samples of Mucorales He searched 🔎 in WGS data for Mycetohabitans DNA 🧬 Then took that approach to clinical 🏥 samples #fungal26

Marie-Claire Harrison tells us how machine learning algorithms 💻 can be used to predict and link ⛓️ phenotype-genotype relationships (like antifungal resistance) across clinical and environmental fungi. #fungal26

CNV 1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣🧬 has a big influence on drug resistance - Rebecca Shapiro’s group has developed a CRISPR activation system for C. albicans and C. glabrata to overexpress genes and ID those genes associated with resistance. 💪💊 #fungal26

Powerful opening by Aleeza Gerstein to Javier San Juan Galan’s work calling the scientific community to think about how we can include peers who are unable to attend meetings due to visa issues. 🌐🫶 Also - really fascinating work on the variation within clinical populations of C. albicans! #fungal26

Marion Perrier work using graph pangenomics in Aspergillus fumigatus 🫁🧫 to reveal genes missing from the reference genome. 🧩🧬 #fungal26

Could the rapid multiple drug resistance seen in Candida auris be due to hypermutation? 😷💊 David Firer looks into clinical isolates to investigate. 🔎 #fungal26

Absolutely fantastic inaugural Fungal Spore Award talk 🏆 from Matthew Fisher. The Anthropocene is an ongoing fungal evolution experiment - like a game of Spore with real world consequences. 🕹️🦠🧬 How does human activity impose selection parameters within fungal evolution? #fungal26

Wheat tandem-kinases 🌾 👯‍♀️ mediate resistance and immunity to fungal pathogens - using a rice 🍚 model to utilize accessible genetic tools. Great talk on some fascinating work by @yichangsung.bsky.social! #fungal26 (Read more here: par.nsf.gov/servlets/pur...)

How your email finds me #fungal26

I will be presenting my poster on endohyphal bacteria and key genes in their symbiosis, today’s session (7:00-10:30pm) at #fungal26 !