Assoc. Professor. Interests: plant-microbe interactions, genomics, fungal genetics, effector biology, anthracnose, Colletotrichum, population genetics
University of Salamanca, Spain
Joined August 2012
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Its finally out!! In this new study we demonstrate how gene duplication facilitated the evolution and specialization of two key effectors from #Colletotrichum used to infect maize. sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
Serenella A. Sukno retweeted
🍫🌱 The future of chocolate could be shaped by CRISPR
Penn State scientists reduced cacao disease by 42% in lab tests by editing just 2 DNA bases out of ~450 million.
A remarkable example of how precision breeding can transform agriculture!
🔗phys.org/news/2026-10-cacao-…
#CRISPR #Cacao #Chocolate #Biotech
Serenella A. Sukno retweeted
Big news in crop genomics! A team from China Agricultural University just published a landmark paper in @CellCellPress: “Deep sequencing of 3,367 maize genomes uncovers substantial contribution of rare variants to agronomic traits.”
The team sequenced 3,367 elite maize inbred lines from 23 countries at high depth (35.7×). They mapped 75.3 million variants, finding that a massive 79.2% are rare variants (MAF < 0.05)—creating a gold-standard reference panel for global research.
Unlike in humans (where rare variants typically explain little variance), this study proved that in heavily selected crops, rare variants are central to genetic architecture. 87.3% of GWAS signals came from rare variants, with effects 2.4× larger than common ones!
Overcame traditional GWAS limitations using gene-based aggregation tests (SKAT-O).
Provided airtight proof with CRISPR-Cas9 validation on key genes like ZmAGO5c (flowering time) and ZmTh x (tassel branch number).
Uncovered nearly 30,000 natural knockout (NKO) candidate genes.
Built a reference panel enabling high-accuracy genotype imputation for low-depth sequencing and GBS data.
cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092…
Comparative Analysis of <fi>Colletotrichum</fi> Isolates From Apple Tree Reveals Differences in Response to Temperature, Organ Preference and Cultivar Affinity bsppjournals.onlinelibrary.w…
Serenella A. Sukno retweeted
For a moment, it almost looked like telepathy. Our new, mildly mind-bending study is now out in @PNASNews.
How rapidly does a plant respond when a neighbor is attacked?
Turns out, in some cases more quickly than the attacked neighbor itself.
@tristancofer led this study at the University of Bern, with support from Gaetan Glauser and Lingfei Hu.
Happy reading!
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.26…
Serenella A. Sukno retweeted
We are pleased to announce that the 18th European Conference on Fungal Genetics (ECFG-18) will take place on 8–10 March 2027 in Helsinki, Finland, hosted by the University of Helsinki and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.
ecfg18.eventsairsite.com/
Registration is ongoing!
happy to share our new work. biorxiv.org/content/10.64898… we show that SV, TE, and lineage-specific pseudogenization are important features of genome evolution in #Colletotrichum graminicola. We also applied #machine_learning approaches to an agriculturally biological problem.
And here we go again.. teaching Plant Pathology and MPMI to our biotechnology master students. @investigausal. More #Colletotrichum fans.
Serenella A. Sukno retweeted
Finally our new preprint is out!
We explore how structural variation, transposable elements and lineage-specific pseudogenization shape #genome evolution in #Colletotrichum graminicola 🍄🌽 biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…
Serenella A. Sukno retweeted
📢 PhD opportunity in Málaga!
We are looking for candidates to apply for an FPU 2026 fellowship and join the Type3 Secretion Lab at IHSM-UMA-CSIC
We study the molecular mechanisms underlying plant–bacteria interactions
🔗 aei.gob.es/ayudas-fpu-2026
🔬 type3secretionlab.es
#PhD
Serenella A. Sukno retweeted
BREAKING: OpenAI might have stolen another major proof.
In a detailed Mastodon post, which I report in full in the comments, Andreas Thom presents several pieces of evidence suggesting that OpenAI may have trained Astra on conversations in which he and Gábor Kun were working on Gromov’s soficity conjecture, one of the ten problems OpenAI later announced Astra had solved.
I know Andreas. We met several times early in our careers. He is an exceptional mathematician, a leading expert on sofic and hyperlinear groups, and one of the most respected scholars in the field. He has spent two decades working on this problem.
If his account is correct, this is not a minor dispute over attribution. It would mean that unpublished human work was absorbed into a model and then presented to the world as a breakthrough by the model itself.
And if the allegations raised by Levent Alpöge, Tristan Buckmaster, and now Andreas Thom are all substantiated, we are no longer looking at isolated incidents.
We may be looking at one of the greatest intellectual scandals in the history of science.
AI is not discovering new mathematics.
AI is stealing human discovery.
Serenella A. Sukno retweeted
Two faculty searches at Berkeley Plant & Microbial Bio @PMB_Berkeley Submit applications by Sept 30
Plant Responses to Environmental Changes aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05…
Plant-Microbe Communities aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05…
Serenella A. Sukno retweeted
🚨 We are recruiting three PhD students to join EdeLab at Université Laval in summer 2027!
The projects will explore:
🧬 Evolution of ankyrin-repeat effectors in gall-forming plasmodiophorids
🦠 Microbiome-mediated insect adaptation to extreme environments
🍃 Leafhopper effectors at the plant–insect interface
Applications are welcome in English or French until September 15, 2026. Full details are available in the attached PDF.
Please share! 🔁
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Avery nice paper! Recurrent Chromosome Destabilization Through Repeat-Mediated Rearrangements in a Fungal Pathogen academic.oup.com/gbe/article…
Serenella A. Sukno retweeted
The amount of basic research done in industry is nowhere near the amount done in universities.
At various times, there have been industry labs that had fundamental research activities and have made important scientific contributions.
Examples in information technology include Bell Labs, IBM Research, Xerox PARC, GE, Phillips, NEC, and several other. That disappeared in the 1990s.
Microsoft Research picked up the torch in the 2000s, followed (to some extent) by Google and then Meta (for about a decade until recently).
But their innovations almost always built on top of academic work, and certainly profited from the whole research ecosystem.
Serenella A. Sukno retweeted
“I sometimes think about how easy it is for a nation to slip into complacency and ruin after decades of basking in the sun. Since science is the engine of prosperity, nations that turn their backs on science and technology eventually enter a downward spiral.”
— Michio Kaku
Serenella A. Sukno retweeted
The Alonso-Stepanova lab at NCSU is hiring a postdoc to build a programmable, reversible transcriptional switch (SCRIBE) to control gene expression in plants 🌱
🔬 Project: nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-awa…
💼 Apply: jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/23284…
Please RT & share!
USDA accelerates plan to close its flagship scientific campus | science.org/content/article/…
Serenella A. Sukno retweeted
NICE study shows that some #Colletotrichum species can infect plants without melanised appressoria, revealing a previously unknown invasion strategy (NMAE) and redefining how these important fungal pathogens enter their hosts.
nature.com/articles/s41467-0…
#evolution #plantpathogen
A maize-associated Rhizobium miluonense fixes nitrogen in free-living conditions through an exopolysaccharide-dependent biofilm mechanism microbiologyresearch.org/con…
