News

We are excited to officially start, but informally continue, a collaboration with Profs. D'Antonio (ES & EEMB), Moritz (Bren & ERI), and Ramirez (Reed College) that explores restoration and resilience of Pseudotsuga macrocarpa, also known as Big Cone Douglas Fir (BCDF), in the Zaca Fire range of Los Padres National Forest.

Austen, Jake and Ryoko present at the annual MSA in Minneapolis. It was great to be back and detox in the BWCAW. Brought home some Lophodermium juniperus!

Here we describe the first parallel genomic analysis of the mycobiont Cladonia grayi and of its green algal photobiont Asterochloris glomerata. We focus on genes/predicted proteins of potential symbiotic significance, sought by surveying proteins differentially activated during early stages of mycobiont and photobiont interaction in coculture, expanded or contracted protein families, and proteins with differential rates of evolution. Photo shows artificial inoculations of thing algal and fungal tissues on top of each other on filter paper.

The EEMB Graduate committee awards the Charles A. Storke Award to an outstanding student who has advanced to candidacy whose research is of the highest quality. The Ellen Schamberg Burley Graduate Scholarship helps defray the costs of conference trips and Austen was selected based on his outstanding academic and research record. Congratulations Austen! 

The Edison Scholars Program, which is funded by Edison International, is a special program run under the auspices of the UCSB McNair Scholars Program. This program is designed to help a wide range of students among which are women, low-income, first-generation, veterans, and those historically underrepresented in science and math.

We have a pretty awesome group this year. To thank everyone, we celebrated with a party at Zodo's. Looking forward to seeing everyone again during summer session!

We always love hosting the Curie-osity girls. Girls between grades 4 and 6 come visit the lab to culture endophytes from plants around campus. It's also a really nice way to connect to this age group in my own setting and talk to them frankly about how, when I was little, I wanted to be a princess (with a lab and greenhouse in her castle through a secret door). I've settled for just the lab and greenhouse. Still working on the secret door...

Rodolfo and Ryoko conducted fieldwork in forests near Kunming and Hangzhou, China, to identify new Lophodermium species associated with Asian conifers. It was a very productive trip thanks to our hosts Prof. Li and Prof. Zhilin Yuan of the China Academy of Forestry. Some valuable samples from the trip include P. yunnanensis, P. armandii, P. hwangshanensis and Cunninghamia lanceolata (top right photo).

Our project was one of 12 proposals to be selected by the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) and the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) for the 2019 Facilities Integrating Collaborations for User Science (FICUS) initiative!

Very excited that this paper is finally out where we describe a new species of Lophodermium and also give a summary of all the pine-associated Lophodermium endophytes to date. We are also well on our way to making Lophodermium a model endophyte with new NSF and FICUS grants that came through over the summer.