Rowena Hill

The BMS officially and enthusiastically endorses the new Global Strategy for Fungal Conservation, launched at #COP17, calling on governments, conservation organisations & land managers to recognise, protect and invest in fungal diversity. www.britmycolsoc.org.uk/global_funga...

Environmental sequencing of grassland soil fungi PhD opportunity here at @earlhaminst.bsky.social in collab with @rothamsted.ac.uk 🍄 @mcmullan0.bsky.social @neilhall.bsky.social @norwichmicro.bsky.social www.earlham.ac.uk/studentship/...

Glad to see this paper in print: Comparative genomics of dark septate endophytes: shedding light on the enigmatic lifestyle and biology of DSEs - Csíkos et al. A #JGI #1KFG project nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

📃 A new review authored by Ellen Cameron at Earlham Institute, and @Gulnara Tagirdzhanova at @SciLifeLab, has explored the landscape of lichen genomics, as improved omics' data enables greater interrogation of its complex symbiosis. @The Lichenologist

Another step in the #Starship story - they move via a circular intermediate. Helps explain how these elements horizontally transfer and means that we can modify them into transformation vectors (starmids). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Opportunity: seeking Senior Editors (Editors-in-Chief) for our international journal, Fungal Biology, taking responsibility for the overall scientific direction, quality and future development. Find out more: www.britmycolsoc.org.uk/vacancies.html #FungalBiology #Mycology @elsevierlsj.bsky.social

🍄‍🟫💻 Explore UKCEH’s new Fungi Explorer, an interactive tool revealing the hidden world of soil fungi across Great Britain using DNA data from 1,000+ Countryside Survey soil samples. Search species, map distributions, or match your own DNA sequences. https://connect-apps.ceh.ac.uk/fungal-explorer/

Developing Epichloë endophytic strains to provide protection to wheat from insects and fungal diseases, building on its success in ryegrass where the majority in New Zealand is not protected from insect herbivory in this way. Richard Johnson #PPATH2026

Biological Databases are critical infrastructure - not projects. As so much effort is put into harnessing AI to solve all our problems, we are allowing the foundational data resources crumble. Treat biological databases as infrastructure, not projects www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Fabulous film about @jenmcgaley.bsky.social's work in the @paszkowskilab.bsky.social. Jen has captured arbuscular mycorrhiza in motion for the first time. Find out more 👉https://tinyurl.com/yc2brzcu 🧪 @cambridgebiosci.bsky.social

Delighted that this paper from my brilliant former PhD student Elvira Hernandez-Gutierrez is now published in @newphyt.bsky.social 😀 Elvira built a model to predict novel pest-host interactions between Agrilus beetles and oak trees 🪲🌳🪾 we hope the approach will be useful in other systems too!

Nearly a year after our symposium on Repeat-Induced Point (RIP) mutations, I’m happy to share the fruit of some of our discussions. The fungal RIP hypermutator mechanism has deep eukaryotic roots www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... We hope to spark interest in this underappreciated mechanism.

The video recordings of the legend 2025 conference held last December on machine learning for evolutionary genomics are now online ! Feel free to have a look if you missed the conference. www.canal-u.tv/chaines/lisn...

📃 A new study in @fungal-ecology.bsky.social from @rowenahill.bsky.social uses GlobalFungi sequencing data to provide the first global assessment of Gaeumannomyces incidence, and reviews current understanding of host interactions and lifestyle.

📝We’ve finished the first draft of our Ganoderma lucidum “origin” article: “A historical specimen of False Lingzhi (Ganoderma lucidum) resolves a 245-year-old confusion within an important medicinal mushroom group.” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Hot off the press #ScienceAdvancesResearch @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... we show that pathogens and non-pathogens share many effectors, and with subtle changes effectors from non-pathogens may become host immune modulators

Thrilled to share our paper now out in Nature Plants 🎉 We developed a genome-host association (GHA) approach to study pathogen adaptation directly from field metadata by using the originating host cultivar as phenotype. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Applications for paid summer research projects from the Royal Society of Biology are now open, closing 28th April! Work with leading plant health researchers on 8-10 week placements, including Rothamsted. Apply now: www.rsb.org.uk/plant-health-ug-studentships.html #studentship #internship

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

So nice to see this out in print, and thanks to @microbiologysociety.org for the smooth publish process! Single-cell sequencing reveals unexpected genetic diversity among Bodo spp. flagellates and their bacterial endosymbionts - www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

How does root invasion differ between endophyte & pathogen? We are interested in this dichotomy of expression in the most important root disease of wheat, take-all: Stealth vs SEVs Exceptional tenacity from Stella (looking for a PhD) and the team @earlhaminst.bsky.social @rothamsted.bsky.social 🙏

Year in industry student Poppy Leslie is presenting her great work on the evolution of wheat-infecting root fungi, check it out at poster 47! 🌾🍄 #CMINorwich26 @earlhaminst.bsky.social @norwichmicro.bsky.social @dsw-isp.bsky.social @mcmullan0.bsky.social

So I pleased to announce the conceptual spawn of FigTree: PearTree (acronym still to be finalised). If you want to dive right in it is hosted as a web app here: artic-network.github.io/peartree (click the “Example...” button for immediate candy and then click every button you can find).

Disperal ecology meets fungi! It is more than just spores people! Check this paper led by ECR @sarahcuprewich.bsky.social and Kristin Barbour! Fun collab supported @cu-esiil.bsky.social One hundred unanswered questions on the dispersal ecology of fungi url: academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...

Article out about our work on #protists at the Earlham Institute🦠🧬 #protistsonsky @earlhaminst.bsky.social @nrpdtp.bsky.social @norwichmicro.bsky.social

Hi everyone! The talk I had the chance to give with @fnucleosome.bsky.social last October is now out on Youtube! If you like evolution, 3D genomics, biodiversity and/or fungi, I think you might like it! 🧬🧪🍄 The submission of this paper has never been that close! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plez...

Calling all OrthoFinder users! We’ve just released GLADE, a tool to infer gene gains, losses, duplications, and ancestral genomes across a phylogeny. GLADE runs directly on OrthoFinder results. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... github.com/lauriebelch/... (1/10)

This article is now published! academic.oup.com/nargab/artic... We’ve added a few new analyses. First off, we show that, while gene presence absence variation (PAV) scales with evolutionary distance in both plants and animals, the base level and rate of accrual are both twice as high in plants.

What enables a fungus to invade a mammal host? @marco-guerreiro.bsky.social unravels signatures of translation adaptation among pathogenic and non-pathogenic species of Trichosporonales. See more: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'm delighted to inform you that our paper "Ecological genomics of saprotrophy to biotrophy transitions in the genus Clitopilus" was published in IMA Fungus. A long standing collaboration with Zhilin Yuan at RISF, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Hangzhou: imafungus.pensoft.net/articles.php...

In this review in Fungal Ecology, Håvard Kauserud (@drhyfe.bsky.social) argues that while the ITS region is by far the best DNA (meta)barcoding marker for fungi, we should not use it naively or simplistically doi.org/10.1016/j.fu...

Open for applications: Massee Arts Grant: up to £5000 to support novel arts projects focused on fungi. For artists from all disciplines & all geographic locations who can help us encourage engagement and learning about mycology. Find out more & apply here: www.britmycolsoc.org.uk/massee-arts-...

Mutualistic microbes drive niche expansion yet constrain diversification https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.14.699472v1

Very excited to share this article written with my PhD advisor @hassansalem.bsky.social, highlighting the amazing work on organ remodeling for symbiosis by Nishino et al @fkttkm.bsky.social. A fascinating system to think about!

Why Ambrosia Beetles Keep Only One Fungus: Competitive Asymmetry, Bottleneck Drift, and Eco-Evolutionary Fixation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.18.694882v1

Our raxtax tool for taxonomic classification is published: it is 2.7–100 times faster than competing tools but equally accurate - raxtax has increasing speedups with growing query and reference sequence numbers compared to existing tools: academic.oup.com/bioinformati...

DOE's Office of Science is making a big push into AI, and that includes our work at the @jgi.doe.gov . We want to hear your thoughts (+ and -) on AI-enabled biological data. Consider joining one of our interviews or focus groups by filling out this form! 🧪🧬🦠🖥️ #secmet jointgeno.me/PortalStorie...

⏰ Closing soon! We're looking for a Research Scientist to work on novel platforms for sustainable myco-food production and precision fermentation. 💷 £37,500 to £40,240 🗓️ Apply by 30 November 2025 ➡️ buff.ly/WDsrbgl

Another fine outcome of my long-standing collaboration with Zhilin Yuan and Long Peng at RISF in Hangzhou: Endophytes with mycorrhizal potentials: biological and ecological implications - New Phytologist nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🚨 PhD project offer linked to Fungarium Sequencing Project! Do you like bioinformatics? fungal genomics? historical DNA? check this out 👇 www.trees-dla.ac.uk/projects/imp...

I'm surprised I only came across it now, but this review on improving communication in data visualization is excellent. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

We're looking for a PhD student! If you're interested in #fungal #genomics & #TEs, meiotic drive, or pathogens, please consider applying. The project is about toxin/antidote genes in the human fungal pathogen A. fumigatus. uu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

Our latest pre-print on TE-mediated tandem duplication of the ToxB effector is now online...still a puzzle for us but we think it is in a Helitron! Together with amazing collaborators, Reem Aboukhaddour and Ryan Gourlie #TE #fungi www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Fungal fossils tell a story of resilience: research by Worobiec et al. published in #FungalBiology (Aug 2025) traces dark septate endophytic (DSE) microsclerotia from the Eocene to today, revealing long-term plant–fungus associations. 👉 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Know metagenomics and could spare 2 mins? I'm applying for funding to build a visual repository for metagenomic classification data (not sequence data). To support the application, I have a short 2 minute survey and it would be a big help if you could fill it in: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

New study from @mvanderheijden.bsky.social lab, showing that many commercial mycorrhizal inoculants are snake oil. So important for this data to be published! Between this, @lizkoziol.bsky.social and Matt Salomon’s work… well I think we make a strong point. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🌿🍄‍🟫🌱🍄We’re recruiting!!🌿🍄‍🟫🌱🍄 I’m looking for two postdocs and a technician to join my group @sheffielduni.bsky.social @sheffieldpps.bsky.social to work with me on my exciting @royalsociety.org Faraday Discovery Fellowship project, details for each post as follows: