News and Blogposts

The International Association for Lichenology congress happened in Trieste in the last week of July. It has been 10 years since the last in-person IAL! Gulnara has presented her posdoc research on Xanthoria omics and secreted proteins as a keynote talk on the final day of the conference.

During the IAL congress Gulnara recieved the Aino Henssen Award for outstanding postdoctoral research on lichen symbiosis from the International Association for Lichenology. Huge thanks to IAL for the honor!

A paper Gulnara contributed to is out in Nature Communications. The paper explores iron exchange as one of the aspects of lichen symbiosis, a first study of its sort. It shows that siderophore produced by the fungal symbiont in Xanthoria lichens enchances growth of the algal symbiont.

Gulnara is presenting at Mendel Early Career Symposium 2026 in Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology, Vienna.

As of today, the lab is officially open!

Gulnara presented her work on lichen secreted proteins at the EMBL Symposium “The cellular mechanics of symbiosis: sensing friend from foe” in Heidelberg, Germany. It was great to learn about great diversity of symbioses across the tree of life and different ways of studying them.

Lab website is now live! The lab itself is coming April 2026