14/11/2025
Jumping Genes and Pathogenic Schemes: the diverse roles that transposons play in pathogen evolution.
Megan McDonald at THE EWG ON WHEAT PATHOGENS WEBINAR SERIES
Thursday, November 20, 2025 17:00 18:00 (UK GMT)
Join the meeting @ Microsoft Teams # Meeting ID: 281 268 009 362 4
Passcode: JR9kd7YE
Summary of the talk:
Transposons have carried many names since their discovery by Barbara McClintock in 1950. Common names such as “junk-DNA” underplayed their importance in the driving adaptation in the genomes of organisms where they are found. As described by Prof. McClintock transposons have a powerful impact on the phenotype of the host, which we now understand to be driven by several different mechanisms, including gene disruption, exon capture and regulatory changes, among others. Our work over the last several years has sought to understand how transposons drive adaptive evolution in plant pathogenic fungi. Fungal genomes are highly variable in their transposon content and contain many novel transposons that have yet to be functionally characterised. We now have very detailed examples of how transposons drive the duplication, pseduogenisation and horizontal movement of effector genes all of which can have real world impacts on the incidence and severity of disease in the field. This talk will explore two of these examples; firstly the duplication and inactivation of ToxB by helitron transposons and secondly the horizontal movement of the necrotrophic effector ToxA within giant Starship transposons. This work provides a foundation for the study of transposon-mediated effector evolution at the field scale as well as mechanistic studies that leverage the diversity of fungal transposons for novel applications in biotechnology.
Our Expert Working Group on Control of Wheat Pathogens has invitedMegan McDonald from the University of Brimingham, UK to this online talk. The title of the presentation is Jumping Genes and Pathogenic Schemes: the diverse roles that transposons play in pathogen evolution . Summary
