thanks!
One of my favourite things about Uppsala is that Carl Linnaeus is basically a city mascot here. There are two coffeeshops just opposite each other, one is called Cafe Linne, and the other is Cafe Carl von Linne
thank you!
🧬 🖥️ 🧪 🦠 🧫 #MicroSky
Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to the project: @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social@angusb.bsky.social@adamrbentham.bsky.social, Lore Ament, Ioana Onut-Brännström, Hanna Johannesson, Clara Jégousse, and Dan MacLean
ALT: a green cartoon character is wearing an orange hat and the words thanks below it
Finally, by analyzing metagenomes of the lichen, we obtained 167 genomes, most of which were bacterial. Many of them seem to depend on the substrate, but we also identified lineages present consistently, raising questions of their relationship to the other symbionts 6/7
In the lichen secretome, we identified a large group of KP4-like proteins, many symbiosis-upregulated. These and some other secreted proteins are similar to known #effectors from plant pathogens, suggesting that similar mechanisms are used in lichen symbioses 5/7
Probably the most exciting part: how do lichen fungi communicate and affect other symbionts? From the genome, we predicted all secreted proteins, and used AlphaFold to model their structures. We clustered the structures and searched them against databases 4/7
Next, we compared gene expression across lichen thallus parts / developmental stages. Surprisingly, many F-box proteins and genes related to RNAi were upregulated in apothecia, the fruiting bodies; secreted proteins were often upregulated in the growing edge 3/7
