László Nagy from the HUN-REN BRC Szeged elected as EMBO member

Jul 9, 2024 | News

This year, the EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organization), founded on 12 July 1964, celebrates its 60th anniversary and its membership today counts more than 2100 researchers in the field of life sciences, 92 of whom have been awarded Nobel Prizes. In 2024, 100 new EMBO Members and 20 EMBO Associate Members from 37 countries were elected.

We are delighted that László Nagy from the HUN-REN Biological Research Centre, Szeged, who was elected a member of the Academia Europaea in 2022, is also a new EMBO member. He and his research group are investigating the relationship between multicellularity, complexity and genome evolution using fungal model organisms. The emergence of multicellular, macroscopic structures and organisms is one of the greatest innovations of evolution, which has radically changed the Earth's surface and, among other things, initiated the evolutionary lineage that led to humans. In the case of fungi, multicellularity is embodied by a microscopic mycelium with filamentous organisation and three-dimensional, visually visible fruiting bodies. The HUN-REN BRC Szeged Fungal Genomics and Evolution Laboratory has made several breakthroughs in understanding the multicellularity of fungi since its establishment in 2014, and its work has contributed to the understanding of general phenomena related to the evolution of complexity.

In the case of fungi, their fruiting bodies, which have reached a complexity similar to that of simpler animals and plants, are not only good model organisms for evolutionary biology, but also the basis for many modern biotechnological applications. The biggest obstacle to the biotechnological use of fruiting body forming fungi is that, in contrast to well-studied groups of organisms, very little information is available about the function of the genes encoded in their genomes. This represents a major limitation for biotechnological development. The research team is currently working to address this major challenge using state-of-the-art -omics, molecular and bioinformatics approaches.

Congratulations to the EMBO membership!