ArticleNature communications2026
Transposable elements hitchhike on Starships across fungal genomes.
Article in Nature communications, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Fungal Starship transposons for interspecies gene transfer.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Article
- Fungal DNA damage repair: from model to driver of virulence and AMR.Bioscience reports · 2026Review
- Article
- Accessory regions and horizontal gene transfer shape the evolution of clonal Colletotrichum nymphaeae infecting strawberry.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Horizontal gene transfer in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and other Saccharomycotina yeasts: a review.World journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2026Review
- Massive proliferation of retrotransposons contributes to genome size expansion in species of the Pseudocercospora genus.Mobile DNA · 2026Article
- Transposable elements hitchhike on Starships across fungal genomes.Nature communications · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Horizontal transfer of transposable elements (TEs) is widespread in eukaryotes, driving genetic variation and often associated with bursts of TE activity. Here, we report a recent TE burst in the insect-pathogenic fungus Metarhizium anisopliae. The actively transposing TEs were likely introduced via hitchhiking on a so-called Starship, a class of large, horizontally transferable transposons. This TE burst likely triggered extensive structural reshuffling across all chromosomes, which was associated with loss of pathogenicity. Expanding our analysis to other fungi, we found that Starship-mediated horizontal transfer of TEs is a general phenomenon. Most (75%) of 522 reported Starships harbor TEs; many of which show evidence of a recent burst, in some cases likely starting from the TE copies on the Starship itself. A high fraction of TEs located on Starships also shows signatures of past horizontal transfer. Collectively, our results establish Starships as major vectors of horizontal TE transfer.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.