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The insect egg is a sessile life stage but not a passive one 🥚 So how do eggs sense & respond to their environment? And which nifty adaptations allow them to actively shape it? Our take on life within the chorion, w/ Monika Hilker & @trichogramma74 🐛 annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.114…

Calling it a year @MPI_Bio & the lab. Lots to be thankful for, not least the chance to grow & science w/ a stellar crew. Here’s to more of this in 2023!

Thank you to the organizers @mcsymbiont, Toby Kiers and @AncestralState for the fantastic and very inspiring conference #EESSymbiosis EMBL. Thanks also to Hassan Salem for the great support and encouragement!

Beyond happy to share that I will be starting a new position as an Assistant Professor at Amsterdam Institute for Life and Environment Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (inactief) this fall! My lab will be recruiting soon, so please reach out if symbiosis, chemical ecology & fungal genomics strike your fancy!

Great talk today from Hassan Salem: 'Beetle-microbe symbioses: Endless forms most functional' Hearing about mechanisms of leaf beetles to house and transmit their bacterial and fungal symbionts, and the consequences of coevolution between microbe and host is just fascinating!

Looking for a PhD position on host-microbe interactions? Consider applying to our international graduate program @MPI_Bio: From Molecules to Organisms! My lab is currently recruiting a student as part of our funded @DFG_Public grant to work on insect-microbe symbioses!

Happy to be part of the amazing SymbNET PhD Summer School #HostMicrobe Symbioses @IGCiencia. I learned a lot and met great people. Thank you to everyone involved 😊. I'm also thankful to Hassan Salem for his encouraging support. We got a prize 🥳

Fusarium is causal to many a plant blight. But it is also increasingly found in stable, functionally diverse symbioses with insects. We examine how the fungus balances this dual act in our latest, with Hassan Salem & Shounak Jagdale in PLOS Pathogens! journals.plos.org/plospathogens/…

New Comment by Hassan Salem & Martin Kaltenpoth: The Nagoya Protocol and its implications for microbiology Hassan Salem Insect Symbiosis Lab #COP28 nature.com/articles/s4156…

What can we learn from timing the onset of symbiosis? And how does symbiont acquisition & molecular evolution impact host adaptation & diversification? We ask these questions of leaf beetles, led by Marleny García Lozano & out today in Current Biology! cell.com/current-biolog… 🧵1/n

Excited to share our work today in Current Biology Thankful for a great collaboration 😊

Super-amazing work by Takanori Nishino, Hiromi Mukai, Minoru Moriyama and other colleagues on a novel insect-microbe symbiosis is now available as preprint Defensive fungal symbiosis on insect hindlegs biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Beautiful (both visually and scientifically) research by Jason Chen testing the role of chance in shaping animal-microbe symbioses.

Parasitism demands the work of specialists. We defined the weird and wonderful secondary metabolism of Escovopsis, fungal parasites of fungus-farming ants. Out today in EIC Jack Gilbert! journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/ms…

Thrilled to be in Kyoto w/ the lab & Aileen Berasategui for ICE ‘24 🐞 Lots of great science to look forward to & old friends to catch up with! Look out for talks by Ines PONS, Marleny García Lozano, and a poster by Christiane Emmerich.

Tortoise beetles snuck into the opening plenary of #ICE2024! If you are intrigued about their cool symbioses, be sure not to miss talks by Hassan Salem, Marleny García Lozano, Ines PONS, and a poster by Christiane Emmerich! I will talk about their fungal mutualists on Thursday.

Some news 🎉 Elated to share that our work will soon be supported by an European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant! There will be openings to join the lab, so if you are keen to learn how plant pathogens double as insect mutualists, do reach out! Amsterdam Institute for Life and Environment Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (inactief) VU Faculteit der Bètawetenschappen #ERCStG

Beetles are masters at coopting microbial genes, enzymes & metabolites. In this Trends in Microbiology article, Marleny García Lozano & I review how microbes shaped one of the most successful animal radiations, thru horizontal gene transfer & symbiosis: cell.com/trends/microbi…

Thrilled and honored to have been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant! We’ll explore why beetles lose genes — only to rely on symbionts instead 🪲🦠 Incredibly proud of the team and excited for this project to take off w/ some remarkable beetles! bio.mpg.de/466825/news_pu…

🎉 We’re hiring! Two ERC-funded #PostdocJobs on insect–phytopathogen mutualisms are available in my lab. Explore the chemical and molecular evolution of symbioses! 🧪Chemical ecology: tinyurl.com/chem-ecol-symb 🦠Phytopathology & mutualisms: tinyurl.com/symb-plantpath