Fabrizio Menardo

Tracking the evolutionary trajectory of a young hybrid plant pathogen A common mechanism by which emerging plant pathogens gain the ability to infect new hosts is hybridization. Despite its widespread occurrence, the outcomes of hybridization remain largely unpredictabl...

Tracking the evolutionary trajectory of a young hybrid plant pathogen. New preprint on how triticale powdery mildew evolved in the ~25 years since its emergence. Congrats to @jigisha1.bsky.social and all coauthors! doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Check out our new pre-print! ✨
We cloned AvrWTK4, the first wheat powdery mildew effector recognised by a tandem kinase protein, and show that an HMA-like integrated domain in WTK4 acts as pathogen decoy. Discover the whole story on bioRxiv ⬇️

Scientists’ role in defending democracy The United States’ democratic leadership, commitment to freedom of expression, and investment in the pursuit of knowledge have long enabled its preeminence in science and technology. Yet today we are ...

Scientists’ role in defending democracy | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Plant-associated fungi co-opt ancient antimicrobials for host manipulation Evolutionary histories of effector proteins secreted by fungal pathogens to mediate plant colonization remain largely elusive. While most functionally characterized effectors modulate plant immunity, ...

📣 NEW PREPRINT 📝

We identified evolutionary origins of many fungal effectors!
We show that fungi secrete lots of antimicrobial proteins, and that some of them were repurposed by plant pathogens for host immune suppression.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

cc @teamthomma.bsky.social

Incredibly proud of this work where we developed a method for understanding the information contained in millions of genomes. Another example of NIH funded research.

The genomic basis of local adaptation in the white x Engelmann spruce hybrid zone Hybridization between species can occur along repeated zones of contact, providing a powerful natural laboratory for studying the interplay between migration and selection, and for identifying loci in...

I am happy to share my second paper with @samyeaman.bsky.social and collaborators! If you are into hybrid zones and tree genomics, this is for you!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

SLiM 5: Eco-evolutionary simulations across multiple chromosomes and full genomes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.07.669155v1

A do-or-die moment for the scientific enterprise Reflecting on our paper “The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly”

Today, our article "The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly" is finally published in PNAS. I hope that it proves to be a wake-up-call for the whole scientific community.

reeserichardson.blog/2025/08/04/a...

Scientific Journals Can’t Keep Up With Flood of Fake Papers The source of the trouble is “paper mills,” businesses or individuals that charge fees to publish fake studies in legitimate journals.

www.wsj.com/science/scie...

"Off-season sex in #Zymoseptoria tritici: little room for late encounters" @biorxivpreprint, sharing our latest study on sexual reproduction in Z. tritici — its epidemiological determinants & impact — may interest those working on plant pathogen dynamics.
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Bar diagram showing the hypothetical global temperature rise if everyone would have emitted like the given income groups.

Global temperatures would have risen by 12.2 °C (!) since 1990 if everyone in the world had emitted like the wealthiest top 0.1% in world.

Fascinating new study in @natclimate.nature.com by Schöngart et al: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thanks Daniel!

"Population genetics of plant fungal threats: Insights from wheat powdery mildew"

I wrote this Primer inspired by the great work of @jigisha1.bsky.social , @fmenardo.bsky.social and colleagues

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

@uclnews.bsky.social @plosbiology.org

Population structure of wheat powdery mildew in Europe and the Mediterranean. Map shows the geographical distribution of the five populations inferred from fineSTRUCTURE.

Agricultural diseases threaten sustainable food production. @jigisha1.bsky.social @fmenardo.bsky.social & co show that the population structure of #Blumeria #WheatPowderyMildew can be predicted by prevailing wind patterns (& reveal genes under recent selection) @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/43qfH9F

Population genomics and molecular epidemiology of wheat powdery mildew in Europe Agricultural diseases are a major threat to sustainable food production. This study of wheat powdery mildew, a disease caused by the fungus Blumeria graminis, shows that the population structure can b...

Very happy to see our paper online: "Population genomics and molecular epidemiology of wheat powdery mildew in Europe". Congrats to @jigisha1.bsky.social and all coauthors! doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Very excited with @tobybarilbio.bsky.social to share this preprint about his latest work on TEs!

We knew that TEs were very pretty active in this global fungal pathogen of wheat.

Now with nearly 2000 Illumina genomes available, we could finally ask questions about historic TE activation waves.

Accessible, realistic genome simulation with selection using stdpopsim Selection is a fundamental evolutionary force that shapes patterns of genetic variation across species. However, simulations incorporating realistic selection along heterogeneous genomes in complex de...

The collaborative paper on adding selection to stdpopsim is out! Learn about how to easily simulate realistic population genomic data with background selection and sweeps, plus some benchmarking of methods for demographic history, DFE, and sweep inference. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Genomic Surveillance and Molecular Evolution of Fungicide Resistance in European Populations of Wheat Powdery Mildew Mutations conferring fungicide resistance to wheat powdery mildew emerged multiple times and are characterised by distinct geographic ranges in Europe and neighbouring regions.

Our paper on the evolution of fungicide resistance in wheat powdery mildew is now published! Congrats to all coauthors! doi.org/10.1111/mpp....