The Jedd Group
Principles of biological organization through evolutionary cell biology
Overview
The Jedd Group explores biodiversity to reveal the physiological and genetic basis of adaptive cellular traits. The group works in diverse taxa across the tree of life and fuels discovery with biochemical purification, mass spectrometry and comparative genomics. Areas of focus include adaptations related to fungal multicellular and coenocytic organization, gravity sensing, and cytoplasmic phase transitions. Recent work has turned to developing marine model systems, where we are focusing on giant algal cells and the evolution of obligate heterotrophy in diatoms. By focusing on biodiversity, our work is predisposed to revealing fundamental principles of cellular organization, while also uncovering evolutionary novelties and identifying opportunities for the development of new applications.
See the research slide show to learn more about current and past projects.
News
12-12-23: Giant jewel-like cells of Borsesenia forbesii.
Each ovoid structure is a single cell.
These cells are many orders of magnitude larger
than typical eukaryotic cells. How did they
adapt and evolve to live in such a unique way?
21-3-23: These diatoms lost photosynthesis to become obligate heterotrophs. Our new work on apochlorotic diatoms isolated from the coastal waters of Singapore will is published in Open Biology. Congratulations to Peng, Christopher and Zeng Hao and thanks to our awesome collaborators! Andy Alverson, Yan Jie and Kayo Kumadaki, and Jay Newby and Yonatan Ashenafi.
Diatoms are highly sentient!
Movie: Diatom gliding motility.
Note deposition of refractive
secreted trail and collision-induced
reversal.
Time is in minutes:seconds
Scale bar = 50 microns
8-1-21: The lab's work on Biomolecular Condensates is featured in Quanta Magazine
12-11-20: Our paper on protoplasmic
gelation is out! The paper is available
here. Thanks to awesome collaborating
labs of Daiwen Yang and Yan Jie.
Press coverage:
Image: Mycelium of Mucor at the
colonies leading edge
9-11-20: Greg's 2020 Karling lecture on "Fungal Mycelia as Complex Microfluidic Systems" can be watched here.
22-10-20: Congratulations to Ahn on Succesfully defending her PhD thesis! "Gellin proteins: flow-induced cytoplasmic clotting in wounded fungal hyphae"
9-9-20:
How do unpartitioned hyphal networks avoid
"bleeding out" when injured? These "primitive
fungi" evolved a sophisticated solution.
Our discovery of instantaneous protoplasmic
gelation will soon be published in Current
Biology.
Movie: Bidirectional protoplasmic
streaming in Phycomyces. Thanks to Jay
Newby for the particle tracking.
2-9-20: Our paper on the role of gene loss in evolution has been highlighted in Quanta Magazine! Thanks to collaborators; Jason Stajich, Ousmane Cisse, David Hewitt, and Minou Nowrousian.
26-7-20: We have an open PhD student position to work on the fundamental and mysterious nuclear-cytoplasmic ratio! Please send your CV to Greg (gregory@tll.org.sg) if you have a bachelors degree in biology or a related field and have a strong desire to pursue fundamental discovery-directed research.
15-7-20: Greg will be delivering the Karling Lecture on "Fungal Mycelia as Complex Microfluidic Systems" to the 2020 virtual meeting of the Mycologial Society of America on July 22nd. Join the MSA and support Mycology!
4-6-20: Evolution and assembly of the fungal Spitzenkörper. Congratulations to Peng! on the publication of her paper: "Spitzenkörper assembly mechanisms reveal conserved features of fungal and metazoan polarity scaffolds" in Nature Communications. Thanks to Daiwen Yang of the NUS for an excellent collaboration to determine the NMR structure of the Spa Homology Domain (SHD). Click here for the paper.
Image: The Neurospora crassa SHD structure reveals
effector binding through a conserved surface groove
(marked with asterisk). This is just one aspect of the
cell polarity scaffolding that appears to predate the
evolutionary divergence of animals and fungi.
1-24-2020: Mixed charge domains (MCDs) play a fundamental role in the regulation of nuclear speckle material properties and function. Congratulations to Jamie on his paper: "Arginine-enriched mixed charge domains provide cohesion for nuclear speckle condensation", published in Molecular Cell. Click here for the paper at BioRxiv.
From Figure 1: Pure Arginine-Aspartic acid (RD) repeat
sequences specify nuclear speckle localisation (marked by
SRSF1). At 60 repeats, RDs begin to self-associate to form
aberrant nuclear bodies (seen as green rods in the Merge
panel)
1-5-2018: Our grant to develop new fermentation technologies to reduce food waste using multicellular fungi was funded today. Thanks to Temasek Foundation Ecosperity for believing in our vision!
24-4-2018: Our paper on the
evolution of fungal gravity sensing
crystals through horizontal gene
transfer (HGT) from bacteria published
today in PLoS Biology. Click here
for the paper.
Press coverage:
Image: A forest of Phycomyces
fruiting bodies
8-2-2017: Anh's paper published! "Innovation and constraint leading to complex multicellularity in the Ascomycota". Thanks to our collaborators; Jason Stajich, Ousmane Cisse, David Hewitt, and Minou Nowrousian.
13-1-2017: Congratulations to Jing Yang on successfully defending her PhD thesis! "Synthetic import substrates reveal crosstalk between peroxisome matrix and membrane protein import machineries"
