Additional information

Research interests

Host – parasite co-evolution in plant pathosystems. Genome architecture and evolution.

Domestication of plants and fungi. Gene flow, hybridization and introgression.

Understanding the processes involved in the adaptation of populations to diverse environments is a fundamentally important question in biology and adaptation to anthropic environments is an excellent framework to investigate this question. Indeed, such adaptation happens on short evolutionary timescales and usually involves strong selective pressures. I have thus focused my research on the evolutionary consequences of artificial selection and anthropic actions on crops and their pathogens. During the first years of my career, I have explored this topic through the lens of plant domestication and of human-facilitated crop-to-wild gene flow. More recently, I have focused on the evolution of fungal pathogens in the context of crop-versus-wild plant hosts. I am currently investigating the evolution and adaptation of fungal crop pathogen to their host and environment at a worldwide scale, using Zymoseptoria tritici as a model organism.

Academic and Research Appointments

2020 – present: Post-doctoral researcher in Prof. Dr. Bruce McDonald’s team at the ETH of Zurich (Switzerland), in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Daniel Croll at the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland).

2017 – 2020: Post-doctoral researcher in Prof. Dr. Eva H. Stukenbrock’s team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön (Germany).

2014 – 2016: Ph.D. student in Dr. Tatiana Giraud’s team at the Ecology Systematic Evolution laboratory in Paris-Saclay University (France). The resulting thesis was titled “Interspecific hybridizations in apple trees and host-pathogen coevolution

Academic publications accepted in peer-reviewed international journals

·      Vasighzadeh A, Sharifnabi B, Javan-Nikkhah M, Seifollahi E, Landermann-Habetha D, Feurtey A, and Stukenbrock EH. (2021) Population Genetic Structure of Four Regional Populations of the Barley Pathogen. Plant Pathology 70:735–744.

·      Lorrain C, Feurtey A, Möller M, Haueisen J, and Stukenbrock EH. (2021) Dynamics of Transposable Elements in Recently Diverged Fungal Pathogens: Lineage-Specific Transposable Element Content and Efficiency of Genome Defenses. G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics 11.

·      Möller M, Habig M, Lorrain C, Feurtey A, Haueisen J, Fagundes WC, Alizadeh A, Freitag M, and Stukenbrock EH. (2021) Recent Loss of the Dim2 DNA Methyltransferase Decreases Mutation Rate in Repeats and Changes Evolutionary Trajectory in a Fungal Pathogen.” PLOS Genetics 17, no. 3.

·      Stauber L, Badet T, Feurtey A, Prospero S, and Croll D. (2021) Emergence and Diversification of a Highly Invasive Chestnut Pathogen Lineage across Southeastern Europe. ELife 10.

·      Feurtey A*, Guitton E*, De Gracia Coquerel M, Duvaux L, Shiller J, Bellanger MN, Expert P, Sannier M, Caffier V, Giraud T, Le Cam B and Lemaire C. (2020) Asian wild apples threatened by gene flow from domesticated apples and by pestified pathogen invasions. Molecular Ecology 29 (24), 4925-4941. [*Contributed equally]

·      Feurtey A, Lorrain C*, Croll D, Eschenbrenner C, Freitag M, Habig M, Haueisen J, Möller M, Schotanus K, Stukenbrock EH. (2020) Ancestral genome compartmentalization predates species divergence in the Zymoseptoria genus.  BMC genomics.

·      Potgieter L, Feurtey A, Dutheil JY, Stukenbrock EH. (2020) On variant discovery in genomes of plant pathogens. Frontiers in Microbiology

·      Eschenbrenner C, Feurtey A, Stukenbrock EH. (2020) Population Genomics of Fungal Plant Pathogens and the Analyses of Rapidly Evolving Genome Compartments. Chapter 14 of Statistical Population Genomics. Series: Methods Molecular Biology.

·      Dumas E, Feurtey A,  Rodríguez de la Vega RC,  Le Prieur S,  Snirc A, Coton M, Thierry A, Coton E, Le Piver M,  Roueyre D, Ropars J, Branca A, Giraud T. (2020) Independent domestication events in the blue-cheese fungus Penicillium roqueforti. Molecular Ecology.

·      Feurtey A, Stevens DM, Stephan W, Stukenbrock EH. (2019) Interspecific gene exchange introduces high genetic variability in crop pathogen. Genome Biology and Evolution.

·      Feurtey A. and Stukenbrock EH. (2018) Interspecific Gene Exchange as a Driver of Adaptive Evolution in Fungi. Annual Review of Microbiology.

·      Feurtey A., Cornille A., Shykoff J., Snirc, A., Giraud T. (2017) Crop-to-wild gene flow and its fitness consequences for a wild fruit tree: towards a comprehensive conservation strategy of the wild apple in Europe. Evolutionary Applications.

·      Feurtey A., Gladieux P., Snirc A., Hood M, Cornille A., Giraud T. (2016) Strong phylogeographic costructure between the anther smut fungus and its white campion host. New Phytologist.

·      Gladieux P., Feurtey A., Hood M.E., Snirc A., Dutech C., Roy M., Clavel J., Giraud T. (2015) Biological invasions: lessons from fungi and the case of the anther smut. Molecular ecology.

·      Cornille A., Feurtey A., Gélin U., Misvanderbrugge K., Gladieux P., Ropars J., Giraud T. (2015) Anthropogenic and natural drivers of gene flow in a temperate wild fruit tree. Evolutionary Applications.