Teresa Pawlowska

My research focuses on the mechanisms underpinning fungal–bacterial symbioses and on the evolution and ecology of these interactions. My group investigates the principles governing the establishment and evolutionary stability of fungal–bacterial mutualisms, as well as the defense mechanisms fungi deploy against antagonistic bacteria.

Current research topics include:

• mechanisms of endosymbiosis establishment in fungi,
• fungal innate immunity,
• the role of endosymbiotic bacteria in the ecological community assembly and evolutionary diversification of Mucoromycota,
• the reproductive biology of mucoromycetes.

Selected Journal Publications

• Branine, M.E., N. Hempel, T.E. Pawlowska. 2026. More than the sum of its parts: reproductive addiction in the ecology and evolution of fungal-bacterial symbioses. Microbiology & Molecular Biology Reviews. In press.
• Lax C., Mondo S.J., Martínez J.F., Muszewska A., Baumgart L.A., Pérez-Ruiz J.A., Carrillo-Marín P., LaButti K., Lipzen A., Zhang Y., Guo J., Ng V., Navarro E,. Pawlowska T.E., Grigoriev I.V., Nicolás F.E., Garre V. 2025. Symmetric adenine methylation is an essential DNA modification in the early-diverging fungus Rhizopus microsporus. Nature Commununications 16: 3843, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59170-x.
• Pawlowska T.E. 2024. Symbioses between fungi and bacteria: from mechanisms to impacts on biodiversity. Current Opinion in Microbiology 80:102496, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mib.2024.102496.
• Gaspar, M.L. and T.E. Pawlowska. 2022. Innate immunity in fungi: Is regulated cell death involved? PLOS Pathogens 18(5): e1010460, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1010460.
• Lastovetsky O.A., L.D. Krasnovsky, X. Qin, M.L. Gaspar, A.P. Gryganskyi, M. Huntemann, A. Clum, M. Pillay, K. Palaniappan, N. Varghese, N. Mikhailova, D. Stamatis, T.B.K. Reddy, C. Daum, N. Shapiro, N. Ivanova, N. Kyrpides, T. Woyke, T.E. Pawlowska. 2020. Molecular dialogues between early divergent fungi and bacteria in an antagonism versus a mutualism. mBio 11: e02088-02020, https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.02088-20, Abstract, Nat Rev Microbiol: In Brief.