Gulnara Tagirdzhanova

@metalichen.bsky.social

906 Followers 621 Following

Assistant Professor at Stockholm University / SciLifeLab Fellow @scilifelab.se @deepsthlmuni.bsky.social‬ lichen symbiosis | metagenomics | evolution Lab website: metalichenlab.github.io #StandWithUkraine she/her

A conference hall with a screen showing the text saying welcome to Mendel Early Career Symposium and the logo, a cartoon showing Mendel watering plants
A door with a name tag. The tag has a logo with the text SciLifeLab. Below is my name and text "Assistant Professor. Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences. Stockholm University". Through the glass wall you can see the office in a state of disarray
A large conference auditorium. In the front, a person standing in front of a projected image showing a yellow-to-grey gradient representing mutualism-paratism spectrum, plus some photos of different biological systems in the bottom
A large conference auditorium. In the front, a person standing in front of a projected image of several hyphae with blue fluorescence
A large conference auditorium. In the front, two people standing in front of a projected image of an ameboid cell with pink and green fluorescence
Poster with the conference name hanging on the wall, atrium of a big glassy building visible on the background
Black field with a macro image of a bright orange lichen Xanthoria in one of the corner. Little diagrams showing a structure of a lichen thallus with different layers in grey and green, a phylogenetic tree, and an alphafold generated structure of a protein. White text says "PhD position in Stockholm University / SciLifeLab. Lichen Biology, Symbiosis, Microbial Ecology & Evolution,Meta-omics Fully funded for 4 years. Start Apr-Sep 2026. Deadline for application: Feb 1st."
upper part: a bar with leather chairs and wooden tables. In the backgroun can se part of a silhouette of a guitarist playing. On the table, there is a laptop with a google doc window open an a glass of beer. lower part: a screen grab with text saying: "structures of molelules and lomecule complexes" (yep, managed to mispel the word molecule in two different ways
Black background with white letters 'metalichen lab'. Right and lower part of the image taken by a macro photo of a bright yellow lichen. The lichen surface has numerous cup-shaped fruiting bodies with orange inner surface
gif showing words ‘thank you’ in big red font and a flying rocket in a corner
text. It says: “Ford and Zaphod looked and passed on. “And this baby,” said Ford, “the tangerine star buggy with the black sunbusters…” Again, the star buggy was a small ship-a totally misnamed one in fact, because the one thing it couldn’t manage was interstellar distances. Basically it was a sporty planet hopper dolled up to something it wasn’t. Nice lines though. They passed on.”
phylogenetic tree. Lowest clade is highlighted in orange and has a pointer labelled ‘Methyltransferase from Tangerine in Xanthoria (Lecanoromycetes). This clade is nested within a different clade highlighted in green and labelled “Chaetothyriales (Eurotiomycetes). It, in turn, is nested within a purple clade labelled as “Sordariomycetes”. A sister branch to this big clade contains multiple leaves highlighted in yellow and labelled “other Lecanoromycetes”.
Zoomed-in Tangerine. A genome fragment is shown in line with blocks in different colors showing genes. A portion of the fragment is highlighted in orange and labeled as ‘Tangerine’. Below, the legend shows starship genes, in three groups. The first contains only the captain. The second is labelled as ‘accessory genes’ and contains DUF3723, PLP, and NLR. The third group is labelled “Cargo genes” and contains the methyltransferase
left part shows bright yellow lichen growing on wood. The lichen is leafy with round dish-shaped fruiting bodies. The right top part shows alignment of 4 genome fragments. The top three all come from different genomes belonging to Xanthoria parietina, the bottom is from Xanthoria calcicola. Grey blocks connecting the genome fragments to show synteny. Overall, the four fragments show synteny, but the X. parietina genomes have an insert missing from X. calcicola. The insert is highlighted in orange and labeled as ‘Tangerine’. The right bottom part shows a gif of a brightly covered cartoon spacecraft shooting through a starry void. The spacecraft is PlanetaryExpress from Futurama.
clipart showing several algal cells with emoji-like faces
phase contrast microscopy image of bright green unicellular alga with round cells arranged in a cluster. The image has SAG watermark on it
the top half shows two panels with microscopy images. Left is a light-microscopy image of a group of algal cells. The cells are round with different sizes. Two arrows point at sporangia: one looks as if someone stuffed 8 footballs in a thin elastic bag. The other is perfectly round and contains many small spores within. The right panel shows the same group of cells, but in fluorescent microscopy, where green color shows chloroplasts. In each cell the chloroplasts are globular with small lobes sticking out. The bottom half shows a photo of Xanthoria lichen - bright yellow and leafy growing on a tree branch
A glass door with several posters attached on and next to it. One says "välkommen till intitutionen för ekologi, miljö och botanik". The other has letters DEEP in big font and below text "Department of ecology, environment and plant studies". Both poster have Stockholm University logo.
A crowd of people, some with pride flags, standing along a street. Behind them the Stockholm city hall flying a Swedish flag. In the distance, a flagpost with a rainbow flag
A brick wall painted grey with a street lamp and a sign saying 'labour in vain yard'
me and a group of colleagues assembled in a coffee room
A special issue dedicated to lichen research with emphasis on new approaches to the study of the symbiosis: The diversity of organisms present in thalli (including all fungi, algae and bacteria); Their physical and metabolic interactions; Their contributions to the functioning of the lichen symbiosis. In addition to original research, we also welcome perspectives, reviews and methods papers. Submission deadline: September 2025. Guest editors: Veera Tuovinen Nogerius, Ioana Onut Brännström, Gulnara Tagirdzhanova, Ellen Cameron
clipart showing several algal cells with emoji-like faces
left diagram shows a bar representing the secretome, which is split into segments by color. The segment that takes up over a half is labeled as uncharacterized. Other annotations are: other hydrolases, proteases and inhibitors, lytic CAZymes, mannosyltransferases, carbohydrate-binding, redox proteins, LRR proteins, ferritin-like, antifreeze proteins, and others.
top diagram shows alignment between two genomes: Trebouxia sp A48 and Trebouxia SL000003. In almost all cases, the two genomes align neatly and one contig in one assembly corresponds to one contig in the other assembly. The bottom diagram shows an upset plot for 8 Trebouxia genomes, including the two mentioned above.
A figure with three diagrams. First shows 20 contigs arranged lengthwise. Red caps on the contig end indicate a telomere, and 16 contigs have telomeres on both ends. The second diagram shows BUSCO completeness scores in the form of a donut chart. Complete is 95.9%, duplicated is 0.6%, fragmented is 0.7%, missing is 2.8%. The third diagram shows minor allele frequency distribution. There is a big peak near zero, which falls very sharply.
the top half shows two panels with microscopy images. Left is a light-microscopy image of a group of algal cells. The cells are round with different sizes. Two arrows point at sporangia: one looks as if someone stuffed 8 footballs in a thin elastic bag. The other is perfectly round and contains many small spores within. The right panel shows the same group of cells, but in fluorescent microscopy, where green color shows chloroplasts. In each cell the chloroplasts are globular with small lobes sticking out. The bottom half shows a photo of Xanthoria lichen - bright yellow and leafy growing on a tree branch
Screen with a title 'how do antimicrobial effectors support lichen?' photo shows a lichen Peltigera photo, below it photos of hyphae called mycobiont, algae called photobiont, and colonies on a plate called microbiota
A big conference hall with a screen and a presenter next to it. The slide is titled "panning for gold in mould" and shows a photo of a bucket of gold sand washed or something like that
A large conference hall with a screen and a presenter next to it. The slide is titled "very clean site specific insertion sites". The slide shows an alignment of several sequences with an insertion in one of them plus a photo of Lore Ament
A big conference hall with a screen and a presenter next to it. The slide is titled "Adding scoring colors as well as size in Phenoscope". The slide shows a 96 grid of pink yeast colonies growing on an algae plate, and a corresponding dot plot that shows bubbles of different size and colors that are approximating the yeast colonies phenotypes
a big conference hall with a screen and a presenter next to it. The slide on the screen is titled 'the genome making of yeast metabolic diversity'
A photo showing yellow daffodils in a flowerbed and a glass building on the background
A photo of a big conference hall with aoudience. A slide projected on the screen is titled "How does P. oxtreatus develop toxocyst". The slide shows a SEM image of a fungal hyphae with a strucure similar to a balloon growing out of it
Audience in a large conference hall and a slide projected on the screen. The slide shows a cartoon of fungal cell recognized by a human immune cell. A word 'mannan' is repeated many many times and overshadows the image.
A slide projected on a screen. The slide shows a photo of Aspergillus and examples of several gene clusters, in which different genes shown as rectangles of different colors
A slide projected on a big screen. The slide shows fitness of an organism in the process of a change in its genetic code. The fitness is high before the switch, then in drops massively and then increases slowly. Next to the dip there is a photo of Trump and Musk
A photo of a scene with ECFG17 logo and text saying 'ECFG17 Dublin Ireland 2025'
A gif with text saying “thank you”. The T is shaped like a fly agaricus mushroom.
Left panel shows a circular phylogenetic tree with many tips. A strip around the tree indicates the phylogenetic position, which shows that the set is dominated by Proteobacteria, Actinobacteriota, and Bacteroidota. Right panels show presence/absence of different bacterial lineages across the 8 samples. Top panel shows 18 lineages assigned to Sphingomonas. Several of them are present in every sample in different constellations, and they show no pattern in regards to the sample type. A few lineages are present in every sample. Bottom panel shows a clade labelled CAHJXG01. Here, there is a clear clustering, and some lineages are found only in concrete, while others are present in tree bark and growth chamber samples.
Left panel shows a circular phylogeny with different clusters highlighted by different colors. The highlighted clusters are: Gamma-crystallin-like, Ribotoxin/ribonuclease, Match to Zymoseptoria effector 8acx, CFEM-like, NTF2/SnoaL-like, Thaumatin-like, Lectin-like, Match to Trichoderma effector Tsp1. Right panel shows structural models of two proteins from the lichen aligned to the models of two effectors (one from Zymoseptoria, one from Trichoderma) that are quite similar.
a meme. Five power rangers labelled as structural biologist, Cryo-EM, Cryo-ET, crystallography, and NMR all stare angrily at a teletubby labeled AlphaFold, who wants to join them.
Left top corner shows a photo of a Xanthoria parietina lichen with arrows showing different parts: apothecia, thallus center, and thallus edge. Right top corner shows a diagram of pairwise comparisons of the number of upregulated genes between the three types: apothecia differ substantially from the other two types (which are similar to each other). The bottom panel shows gene expression for three selected proteins: F-box protein, RNA-dependednt RNA polymerase, and Argonaute protein. For all three, the expression decreases from apothecia to center, to edge, to culture.
Left part shows photos of a lichen and the lichen mycobiont grown separately on a petri dish. Right part shows groups of genes upregulated in lichen symbiosis compared to culture: transporters, polysaccharide-related, methyltransferases, secondary metabolism, self/non-self recognition.
A meme with 4 panels showing a lichen with a cartoonish face drawn on it. The text says: “A lichen sits in a community. Is the community made of lichen? Or is the lichen made of community? It screams, for it does not know”.
Photo of David Lynch saying "One day, the sadness will end. But I don't think today's the day"
a thank you gif with a sesame street character Grover
screenshot from NCBI showing several of the genome assemblies from this project
a cartoon, in which a rhino interviews a bird and says "I see by your resume this would be your first time in a symbiotic relationship"
a sankey plot showing progressive filtering of the dataset. from our initial data (480 metagenomes), we first excluded 43 as duplicated. Of the remaining 437 metagenomes, only 375 yielded at least one genome, of them only 330 metagenomes yielded the genome of LFS. Only 16 metgaenomes yielded a genome of the LFS, the photobiont, and a high-frequency bacterium
a tree of eukaryotic genomes recovered from lichen metagenomes that also shows completeness of cofactor pathways in each genome. cobalamin pathway is mostly missing, and biotin pathway is present in algae but mostly absent in fungi. Thiamine is present in most, but not all genomes
ms crabapple from the simpsons underlining the word 'symbiosis' written on a blackboard
a graph that shows how individual strains within Lichenihabitans are paired with various lichen fungal symbionts
a phylogenomic tree of bacterial species recovered from lichen metagenomes, sectors show four bacreial families (Acetobacteracea, Acidobcateriaceae, Beijerinckiaceae, and Sphingomonadaceae) that together account for other a half
a dot graph showing that the number of genomes increases with increasing sequencing depth
gif showing a matrix of 1s and 0s
SEM of a lichen crossection