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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving
@endosymb.bsky.social
47 followers 36 following 48 posts
Post-doc @ Crop Science Centre, Cambridge. Arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis, biosensors & the hormone KL. ORCID 0000-0003-3040-4543
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · Apr 15
I'm a scientist working on understanding and manipulating the interactions between plant roots and beneficial microbes, with an interest in plant hormones and synthetic biology.

Check out my publications: orcid.org/my-orcid?orc...
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Reposted by Thomas Irving
endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · 26d
I'll be presenting Wed 17th 11:30 at IMMM2025 in Munich in our labs work on the role of the D14L-SMAX1 module in the arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis, and why we think it operates in two distinct roles (regulating the common symbiosis pathway and independent of it in the cortex).
#immm2025
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · 26d
I've also got a poster (#9) if you want to discuss further details.
endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · 26d
I'll be presenting Wed 17th 11:30 at IMMM2025 in Munich in our labs work on the role of the D14L-SMAX1 module in the arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis, and why we think it operates in two distinct roles (regulating the common symbiosis pathway and independent of it in the cortex).
#immm2025
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · Sep 8
Tokyo waterworks museum, pretty small but it's worth a look around
endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · Sep 8
Not sure if there's some relationship to raccoondogs or if it's just an artistic predeliction for the scrotum as a weapon
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · Sep 8
Spirit of chlorea defeated with bottled water and improved hydraulic infrastructure
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Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · Aug 2
Alien infiltrator

(Rhizophagus irregularis in rice lateral root, 3d reconstruction)
endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · Jun 30
Actually poster 101 😅

Hope to see you all tomorrow
endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · Jun 20
I'll be at @ipgsa2025.bsky.social in 10 days time - come find me at poster 102 to discuss what we've learned in rice about the role of KL & its negative regulator SMAX1 in root development, mycorrhizal symbiosis and germination, as well as our efforts to take chemical control of this pathway.
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · Jun 27
Probably the direct binding of PHRL7 overrules the more general KL signalling of nutrition, but it wouls be interesting to see if in the legumes KL signalling is more dominantly regulated by nitrogen status.
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · Jun 27
Wondering how this fits with SMAX1 - at least in Glycine it appears to inhibit nodulation, and is degraded downstream of PHR (in Arabidopsis & rice).

( @oswaldovaldesl.bsky.social )
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Reposted by Thomas Irving
alexguyon.bsky.social
Alex Guyon @alexguyon.bsky.social · Jun 24
1/🚨 New preprint alert! Can mutualists and pathogens co-colonise the same living plant cell and what does that do to the plant membranes that surround these microbes?
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · Jun 20
I'll be at @ipgsa2025.bsky.social in 10 days time - come find me at poster 102 to discuss what we've learned in rice about the role of KL & its negative regulator SMAX1 in root development, mycorrhizal symbiosis and germination, as well as our efforts to take chemical control of this pathway.
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · May 20
Some more #mycorrhiza #microscopy

Rhizophagus irregularis inside a rice lateral root (plant & fungal CWs stained with calcofluor white, 400x mag)
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · May 15
Thanks, glad my rambling made some sense. Not sure I'm enough into phylogenomics to write that review, but @alexdallaire.bsky.social might have a more informed take.
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · May 14
There are plenty of extant fungi that range from pathogenic to mutualistic depending on the environment too, trying to categories things beyond 'capable of intimate metabolic association' may be looking at it wrong.
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Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · May 14
Some people think there is a geologically regular switch between pathogenesis and symbiosis in the EcMF linages, but thats disputed and not well evidenced.
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · May 14
For the review's scenario, I guess you could have a fungi terrestrialised to grab lithic minerals, and reaches back to water to pull carbon from aquatic macroalgae? Seems possible but IDK how likely.
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · May 14
Aquatic to terrestrial transition of lichens makes a lot of sense, but we're looking at different linages for plant/mycorrhiza. Geosyphon & Mortierella are both reported to have endosymbiotic algae, which would be another route, but again doesn't match plant phylogeny emerging from a macroalgae.
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Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · May 14
Increased access to minerals may also be sufficient, though you'd think if this was the case you'd be able to find mycorrhizal-like associations in extant macroalgae
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · May 14
with partially terrestrial filamentous fungi foremost for providing hydraulic conductivity, but TBH glomeromycotina genomes are so reduced we could just be missing some service an aquatic ancestor could have provided (like some extant vitamin exchange cycles between algae & fungi in their CW).
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Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · May 14
rather than a commensal & it would seem quite likely symbiosis precedes terrestrialisation. Though you do have the question of what the aquatic fungus provided.
I could also conceive of the first plants being an interaction between algae in intermittently dried fresh water,
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · May 14
I'd missed that line (early land plants tamed some of their attackers, leading to mutually beneficial AM relationship) in the review, IMO better to see evolution to symbiosis is really a two-way street.

I don't think we have evidence that the first mucoromycota symbiont was a pathogen
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · May 13
I think we can also hypothsize two waves of autotroph-fungal terrestralisation, first of ascomycete - algal (lichen) and then of mucoromycota - plants (Honegger 2012, though again the fossil evidence isn't old enough to differentiate)
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endosymb.bsky.social
Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · May 13
On the plant side, chareles seem to have most of the core symbiotic geneset but I don't know of any known fungal symbiont of them, or even to what extent its been investigated - though land plant fossils predate fossil chareles so what their LCA was is also purely inferred from phylogenomics
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Thomas Irving @endosymb.bsky.social · May 13
It makes sense to me that Mucoromycotan symbiosis would arise from an fungus that associated with an alga either pathogenically or sapotrophically on waste or dead cells, but at this point I don't know how you'd tell that apart.
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