Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Daniel Croll

@danielcroll.bsky.social

2K followers 760 following 100 posts

We want to understand how pathogens adapt and cause diseases. Also passionate about TEs, pangenomes & population genomics, bioinformatics and conservation genomics. Professor of Evolutionary Genetics @ University of Neuchatel 🇨🇭 Hobbies: 👧🏻👧🏼🏔️🏕️

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · Apr 25

Excited to do a postdoc in beautiful Neuchatel / Switzerland🇨🇭?

We have several postdoc positions open at the moment!

Check our website for the full ads here: pathogen-genomics.org/jobs

Happy to answer any question and please spread the word to anyone who might be interested!

1 65 75

Reposted by Daniel Croll

Annie Hatmaker, Ph.D. @annemakerofhats.bsky.social · 18h

If you saw my talk on the population structure of #Aspergillus flavus at Fungal Genetics in 2024, you might have heard someone ask "how does Aspergillus oryzae fit into the picture?"
If so, you heard my answer was "wait and see--we're working on this exact topic"
Well, the wait is over! Preprint ⬇️

bioRxiv Microbiology @biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social · 4d

Population-Specific Transcriptomic Shifts Underlie Secondary Metabolic Diversification in Aspergillus flavus and the Domestication of Aspergillus oryzae https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.02.680074v1

1 7 15

Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · 23h

Neuchâtel morning glory - I love this time of the year!

Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · 5d

There were a few weeks in summer with cool and bad weather, so it snowed quite low. But the heat before and afterwards made snow melt as much as in the previous hot summers. Glaciers retreated again near record levels...

Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · 5d

The🇨🇭Classics in full glory 🚴

1 15

Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · 19d

This is so exciting news, Megan!! Switzerland🇨🇭 is lucky to have you (again) and I am so looking forward to have you soon as a colleague close-by.

We'll make sure to have you visit my beloved University of Neuchatel soon!

Megan McDonald @mcdonaldmeganc.bsky.social · 19d

There are no words to describe how excited and honored I am to take on the role. Already had such amazing support from the plant pathology community in Switz and cannot wait to grow the team further and see how far we can get in tackling our fungal foes. Look out for jobs starting in May 2026!

Departement Umweltsystemwissenschaften (D-USYS), ETH Zürich @usyseth.bsky.social · 19d

We warmly welcome Dr. Megan McDonald as Associate Professor of Plant Disease Dynamics. Her research on fungal diseases in crops will strengthen our expertise and collaborations across plant sciences. 🌱

Reposted by Daniel Croll

nikogeldner.bsky.social @nikogeldner.bsky.social · 20d

Call for a tenure-track position at our Department of Plant Molecular Biology in Lausanne! We are searching for promising early-career researchers in the broad field of plant-organismal interactions. Deadline: November 30, 2025 - Please re-post!

career5.successfactors.eu/career?caree...

Career Opportunities: DBMV: Tenure Track Assistant Professor towards Associate Professor in the field of Plant-organism (22484)

career5.successfactors.eu

2 130 80

Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · 22d

Cycling home time gets the autumn glow-up! 🚴‍♂️🍁

Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · 27d

What an amazing story of gut bacteria-fungi interactions! New paper out in Nature by @judith-behnsen.bsky.social's lab

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

www.nature.com

Reposted by Daniel Croll

Sam Yeaman @samyeaman.bsky.social · 28d

University of Calgary is hiring a tier I CRC professorship in crop genomics. Come work in one of the most beautiful corners of the world!
careers.ucalgary.ca/jobs/1668764...

Canada Research Chair (Tier I) in Translational Crop Genomics in Sustainable Agriculture in Calgary, ...

careers.ucalgary.ca

23 23

Reposted by Daniel Croll

🧬Jacob L Steenwyk @jlsteenwyk.bsky.social · 28d

There's a lot happening in AI, and we made a way to keep up.

@genomelybio.bsky.social will now post weekly reports about AI (& beyond). Eg, we examined & summarized 166 articles, 56 community posts (eg, from Reddit), and 10 trending topics (eg, from Bluesky)

genomely.substack.com/p/ai-weekly-...

1 5 5

Reposted by Daniel Croll

Remco Stam @rstam.bsky.social · Sep 8

I am excited to share the news that Cristina Barragan @cbarragan.bsky.social got awarded an Emmy Noether Fellowship to start her own research group in my department @uni-kiel.de to explore population dynamics of fungal cereal pathogens!

1 3 17

Reposted by Daniel Croll

Hanna Johannesson @hannajohannesson.bsky.social · Sep 7

We have several open positions in my group, funded from the ERC Grant on the Early Sequestered Germline of Fungi. We search broadly for applicants at both PhD and master-level, with a dedicated interest in fungal evolutionary biology. Please forward and RT!
Find the positions here: su.varbi.com

Lediga jobb vid Stockholms universitet

Jobb

su.varbi.com

52 50

Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · Sep 5

Big congratulations, Michael!!

Reposted by Daniel Croll

Clémence Marchal @clemmar.bsky.social · Sep 4

Super excited and honoured to have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant for CooPAIRation!

How do plant immune receptors work together to trigger an immune response? Can we modulate immune responses for disease resistance? We will tackle these questions in CooPAIRation

Positions to be announced soon!

European Research Council (ERC) @erc.europa.eu · Sep 4

📣 The ERC Starting Grant call results are out!

Find out which early-career researchers will receive funding this year, what they will be investigating, where they will be based... plus lots of other #ERCStG facts & figures for 2025!

➡️ buff.ly/IsafuFh

#FrontierResearch 🇪🇺#EUfunded #HorizonEurope

18 17 83

Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · Sep 5

Congratulations Clémence!!

Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · Sep 3

Reproduction in ants 🐜 just keeps blowing my mind 🤯

But this here is the crown for sure... for now.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

(go also check out obligate chimerism, social chromosomes, clonal production of females and males, and much more...)

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature

In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same moth...

www.nature.com

1 7 29

Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · Sep 3

Wow, mind boggling! 🤯

Reposted by Daniel Croll

Alexandra Dallaire @alexdallaire.bsky.social · Sep 3

I’m super happy to present the first discoveries of the RIKEN-Cambridge Joint Crop Symbiosis Research Team, based in Japan 🇯🇵

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

A thread 👇

Reductive evolution of the DNA replication machinery in endosymbiotic fungi

The molecular machinery for replicating and repairing DNA accurately is critically important for life and highly conserved across the Tree of Life. Here we show that two major lineages of fungi, Glome...

doi.org

6 24 53

Reposted by Daniel Croll

Annie Hatmaker, Ph.D. @annemakerofhats.bsky.social · Aug 18

Thrilled to share that the final chapter of my PhD with @rokaslab.bsky.social is now out in @natcomms.nature.com 🎉
Read it to find out how population structure impacts pathogenicity in Aspergillus flavus, a fungus that infects humans 🧪
rdcu.be/eAToj

Population structure in a fungal human pathogen is potentially linked to pathogenicity

Nature Communications - Genetic diversity between clinical and environmental fungal isolates of Aspergillus flavus is poorly studied. Here, the authors analysed genomic data from a global set of...

rdcu.be

2 20 51

Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · Aug 20

That is amazing tenacity!

My success rate with zero ERC submissions and zero awards remains “undefined”.

Flo Débarre @flodebarre.bsky.social · Aug 20

At the end of his #ESEB2025 plenary on deep-time palaeogenomes, Love Dalén shared his history of trying to obtain a big grant for his work. It eventually worked out!

Photo of the talk, showing 3+4 ERC logos crossed out and two Wallenberg foundation logos crossed out

1 6

Reposted by Daniel Croll

Fantin Mesny @mesny.bsky.social · Aug 15

📣 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

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, ...

www.biorxiv.org

1 44 65

Reposted by Daniel Croll

Toby Baril @tobybarilbio.bsky.social · Aug 14

Looking forward to attending my first #ESEB meeting in Barcelona next week #ESEB2025!

Interested in the adaptive potential of transposons? I’ll be presenting my latest work in the Ecological Genomics of Coevolution satellite symposium on Weds 20th - feel free to join!

#TESky #TEworldwide

4 14

Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · Aug 14

Looks like you did better than all the people I saw standing around frustrated at the train station this morning. The botanical garden is lovely here!

1 2

Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · Aug 13

Could not agree more…

TanentzapfLab @tanentzapflab.bsky.social · Aug 13

The goal of a PhD is not to learn some facts or read a few papers or learn a bunch of techniques. The goal of a PhD is to learn independence, problem solving, how to finish things you start, resilience, & gain the ability to adapt & think creatively. Learning these things is hard.

Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · Aug 12

Tobias Baril (@tobybarilbio.bsky.social‬) and I are very excited to share our Opinion piece in Trends in Microbiology.

We were struck by the convergent phenomenon of hypermutation in fungal pathogens and hope that our piece helps connect puzzle pieces.

Please check Toby's story below and share.