Host-induced fungal CAZymes act as disease determinants and drive multihost compatibility.

Nature Reviews Microbiology, Published online: 24 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41579-026-01379-8This Genome Watch discusses recent evidence on the interactions among a plant, a fungal pathogen, its bacterial endosymbiont and the rhizosphere microbiome, highlighting how such multipartite relationships shape plant health and disease, with implications for crop productivity in an era of global change.

This month's ERGA BioGenome Analysis & Applications Seminar will feature talks by Emile Gluck-Thaler and Aaron Vogan on the recently discovered Starship giant transposons and their implications for…

Nature Microbiology, Published online: 17 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02493-2Functional versatility plays a key role in shaping root microbiota.

Plants and other photosynthetic organisms interact with their environment and surrounding microbiota through specialized associations. A global core microbiota has been proposed at high taxonomic levels, such as the order level. However, it remains unclear which environmental factors and how microbe-microbe interactions drive variation of this core microbiota at lower taxonomic resolution. Here, we leveraged the environmental diversity of 141 sites across the southwest of France to characterize algal populations, and their associated bacterial and fungal microbiota. We then performed a meta-analysis, combining these data with published datasets to formally identify the global core microbiota of terrestrial photosynthetic organisms, which comprises seven bacterial and five fungal orders. We next investigated diversity within this core microbiota and the environmental drivers shaping site-specific community composition. While environmental factors have a low impact on the total relative abundance of core orders, the core microbiota at the ASV-level is impacted by climatic factors, edaphic factors, and plant community descriptors. Using interaction network analysis, we finally explored how microbe-microbe interactions contribute to the assembly of stable core communities. Our results show that core ASVs occupy central positions in algal-associated microbial networks and that distinct core orders drive site-specific variation in core microbiota structure. Together, these findings highlight the importance of both environmental context and microbial interactions in shaping the composition and stability of the core microbiota associated with photosynthetic organisms. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. European Research Council, 951444 – PATHOCOM, erc-stg-948219, EPYC Agence Nationale de la Recherche, ANR-10-LABX-41 Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, https://ror.org/00cwqg982, BB/ X011054/1, BBS/E/F/000PR13631

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Abstract. Dikaryotic rust fungi maintain two distinct haploid nuclei for most of their life cycle, making their large, repeat-rich genomes difficult to ass

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Nature Plants - Gamboa et al. identified three proteins that restrict meiotic crossovers near centromeres. This finding suggests that cohesion regulation plays a role in this suppression and...

Nature - Human cells cultured in microgravity produced fewer mitochondrial proteins.

Microbes rarely travel alone. In any given environment, millions of microbial species compete with each other for resources while locked in an endless state of warfare […]

Fusarium elicitor responsivness and MIK2-clade proteins are conserved across plant families.

Fusarium oxysporum MRL8996 is a fungal strain isolated from a severe case of contact lens-associated keratitis. Here we report a near-complete genome assembly of this isolate using a hybrid Nanopore a...

The rapid evolution of plant pathogens poses a persistent threat to global agricultural sustainability, often outpacing the discovery and deployment of natural disease resistance genes. While bioengin...