Fall lab news

Nat visited New Mexico State University several times this summer to complete work at the Jornada LTER site working with Nicole Pietrasiak (@drylandalgae) on the micro- and myco-biomes of biological crusts. Visits to Anza Borrego and Boyd Deep Canyon for Tania to scope out UCNRS research sites to explore desert rock varnish and rock or crust associated black fungi. Julia continued to develop her Joshua Tree research sites for lichen studies and has collected and sequenced new accessions for a reference library of lichens from Joshua Tree NP.Congrats to Jesús (IG: variety_hour) who passed his qualifying exam has continued to explore zygomycete diversity focusing on sexual reproduction.  Derreck has been working on bacteria-fungal interactions via volatiles and new work with N. crassa sensing of these. Yan has submitted a manuscript on his postdoc work on phylogenomics and dating the emergence of the the anaerobic gut fungi. Jinfeng has submitted and is revising work on characterizing the transposition and burst of the Ping, Pong, and mPing transposable elements across 3000 Rice accessions. Sawyer generated and analyzed whole genome sequence from strains of Rhizopus stolonifer in his population genomics project which he presented at the IMC11 conference.New publications including population genomic diversity of Candida lusitaniae, Entomophthorales proteases, space fungi!, and fungal & bacteria communities in Antarctic rocks came out in the last few months.Hopefully another update before the end of 2018 but check out pictures and tweets for shorter updates.