Lidija Berke

The first paper of my PhD is now available as a preprint! 🎉

Transposable elements (TEs) don't just jump within fungal genomes, they also move extensively between species. In this study, we screened over 1,300 fungal genomes and found a conservative estimate of 5,500+ horizontal transfer events.

Starship giant transposons dominate plastic genomic regions in a fungal plant pathogen and drive virulence evolution Nature Communications - Giant transposons, known as ‘Starships’, mediate horizontal gene transfer between fungal genomes. Here, Sato et al. show that Starships occupy genome regions...

📣 Happy to see the journal publication 📄 of our work on Starships 🚀 in Verticillium fungi: terrific work led by @yukiyosato.bsky.social
rdcu.be/exBSp

Poster at #ISMPMI2025 from collaborations with @sainburylab.bsky.social #Proteomics group: P011 ( @isabelmonte.bsky.social ), P073 ( @HeeKungAng group), P086 & P034 (Zipfel group) P101 ( @tolgaboz.bsky.social ) and P130 ( @jonathandgjones.bsky.social and XiaoLin)

A nod to the modest beginnings of #2025ISMPMI in 1982 by Alga Zuccaro. I’m incredibly excited to join the 20th edition!

Are you at #PAG32? Don’t miss the talk by Lars Gabriel on our new gene finder Tiberius on Tue at 11:50 in Pacific A! He also presents 2 posters on Tiberius. P102 is on diatom genome annotation.

Starship giant transposons dominate plastic genomic regions in a fungal plant pathogen and drive virulence evolution Starships form a recently discovered superfamily of giant transposons in Pezizomycotina fungi, implicated in mediating horizontal transfer of diverse cargo genes between fungal genomes. Their elusive nature has long obscured their significance, and their impact on genome evolution remains poorly understood. Here, we reveal a surprising abundance and diversity of Starships in the phytopathogenic fungus Verticillium dahliae. Remarkably, Starships dominate the plastic genomic compartments involved in host colonization, are enriched in virulence-associated genes, and exhibit genetic and epigenetic characteristics associated with adaptive genome evolution. We further uncover extensive horizontal transfer of Starships between Verticillium species and, strikingly, from distantly related Fusarium fungi. Finally, we demonstrate how Starship activity facilitated the de novo formation of a novel virulence gene. Our findings illuminate the profound influence of Starship dynamics on fungal genome evolution and the development of virulence. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

📣New year, new preprint @biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social 🎉! A study led by the brilliant @yukiyosato.bsky.social showing that Starship giant transposons dominate plastic genomic regions in the fungal plant pathogen Verticillium dahliae and drive virulence evolution. 🧵[1/12] doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Happy to see our most recent work on genome evolution of Fusarium isolates infecting banana published in
@NewPhyt nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Congratulations especially to #AvWesterhoven
and to all involved colleagues
@binfutrecht.bsky.social #UUBeta #WURplant
#PhytoWUR @keygene.com

Excited to share the last chapter of
#XinZhang's PhD thesis on the evolution of secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters in the fungal genus Aspergillus biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
@binfutrecht.bsky.social #UUBeta
#WesterdijkBiodiversity

Congratulations Xin and supervisors! 🎉

Greenhouse Effect xkcd.com/2889

Q&A with Paulien Hogeweg #NatureComputationalScience www.nature.com/articles/s43...