The project has established vast genomic resources for investigating how pathogens can adapt to attack a major crop. Considering both local scales (individual fields) and continental, as well as nuclear and mitochondrial genomic diversity, we have gained the following insights:
- Individual wheat fields can be colonized by massively diverse pathogen gene pools. The extent of genetic diversity suggests that the studied wheat pathogen is largely unhindered to adapt to individual wheat varieties.
- We identified genomic signatures indicating what mutations were particularly relevant to attack wheat varieties.
- At the continental scale, we find that the pathogen experienced severe bottlenecks to colonize more isolated regions including Oceania. Gene flow in Europe is extensive challenging traditional quarantine measures.
- Analysis of the mitochondrial genome reveals an unexpectedly high diversity that might be relevant for adaptation.
The complete list of output including seminars, conferences, outreach and publications is below:
1.) Talk given at the "Workshop on Ecological Genomics" (Paris, France, 07.2018)
2.) Talk given at the "Meeting on Host-Microbe Genomics" organized at the ETH Zurich (Zurich, Switzerland, 09.2018)
3.) Talk given at the workshop "At the border between ecology and evolution" (Montpellier, France, 03.2019)
4.) Talk given at the "Seminar on Genomics and Evolution of Microbes" at the University of Neuchâtel (Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 04.2019)
5.) Poster presented at the "Zymoseptoria Community Meeting" at the ETH Zürich (Zurich, Switzerland, 07.2019)
6.) Manuscript published as a preprint on bioRxiv "Population-level deep sequencing reveals the interplay of clonal and sexual reproduction in the fungal wheat pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici" DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.07.191510(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)7.) Additional manuscripts are in preparation.
