Jessie Uehling I Assistant Professor of Fungal Biology I BSc Botany, Humboldt State University I MSc Mycology, Humboldt State University I PhD Genetics Genomics, Duke University I Boise, Idaho
A Fun Gal and her Fungi
Simply put, I love fungi and being outside!! My day job is running a lab focused on evolution of fungal symbioses. In my free time I love to hike, snowboard, surf, and spend time with my family. We enjoy foraging for regional edible fungi and cooking them together. I’m also very passionate about being an educator and mental health. I hope to bridge these two topics by providing my students and trainees with encouragement to take both their studies and self-care very seriously.
Fascinated by Fungi
We study fungal bacterial interactions, in particular the bacteria that live inside of fungal hyphae. We call these the fungal microbiome, and they have strong impacts on the ways fungi behave. So much so that over time, associating with some endobacteria could change how fungi evolve. I have always been fascinated by fungi and how natural forest ecosystems function, and was lucky to be involved in some of the first descriptions of the fungal microbiome. It felt like a natural extension of my curiosity about how peaceful and simple the beauty of forests are, and yet how complex the symbioses within can be. It blows my mind that fungi have their own microbiome at all, let alone how much the bacterial microbiome can influence their host fungi.
A Global Community
My mycological research has taken me around the world to internships, conferences, collaborative research, field work and universities. The best part by far has been meeting other mycologists. They are a tight knit group of incredible people, and they look out for each other. Some of my most memorable mycological adventures include field work in the remote Amazon, Congo River Basin, and conferences in Paris and Bangkok.
Words of Wisdom
My advice to incoming students interested in science is to get some hands on computational and wet lab research experience by connecting with research labs and developing a research project.