This was a Stentor timelapse we made earlier this week from her trip to Boston (which she also had to crowdfund). She was magically able to locate one ‘on demand’ despite that I very rarely find one in Boston. She also brought me samples from all the way up the east coast. #sciart #microscopy

We all know #fungi are the dominant microbial #eukaryotes in #forest #soils… or are they really?
In our new paper, we revisited 51 forest metatranscriptomes from 4 European and North American forest regions - and found that protistan predators outshine fungi in activity!

I am doing a short workshop in this symposium (quoted below) for folks in and around Leipzig. Here's the abstract. I really indulged myself with this one.

A Guerilla Approach to Scientific Workflow:

Looking for something new to integrate into an #evolution or #microbiology course? Useful for lectures, labs, homework?

Have a look at our STEPS program, which simulates bacterial evolution, including the #LTEE. Easy web-based interface & lab manual w/ exercises to help develop students' intuition.

We're excited to release metaTraits.embl.de! 🦠 Interactively explore 140+ 𝗺𝗶𝗰𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗻𝗼𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗶𝗰 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘁𝘀, harmonized & integrated from culture-derived collections 🔬 & genome-based predictions 🧬 for >2M MAGs & genomes.

Publication at NAR: doi.org/10.1093/nar/... @narjournal.bsky.social #microsky 🧵 1/8

In remembrance of Peer Bork  | EMBL EMBL and its community are deeply saddened by the death of Peer Bork, the organisation’s Interim Director General.

I woke up to some very sad news...

Peer was a giant of bioinformatics and computational biology and an inspiring mentor to everyone who had been in his group. I find myself repeating things he said all the time and will probably keep doing so for the rest of my life

www.embl.org/news/embl-an...

With the release of anvi'o v9, the 300k+ contigs databases available for download on the GlobDB website are now compatible with both the development version and the latest stable release (v9) of anvi'o.

More info:
globdb.org/news

Thanks #anvio team!
🖥️🧬🦠

amazing work!

Excited to see this published! A big part of why SAR11 is so tricky to grow like "normal" microbes.

Genomic clues to the origin of eukaryotic cells How did eukaryotic cells with complex architecture evolve from simpler prokaryotic cells? DNA analyses offer possible answers.

How did eukaryotic cells with complex architecture evolve from simpler prokaryotic cells? DNA analyses offer possible answers

go.nature.com/4sEMwLH

The Age of Academic Slop is Upon Us what happens when AI automates "normal science"?

I just finished a three-year term as an editor at an international relations journal. I began at the start of the LLM era but ended right in the middle of it. Our volume of submissions tripled and our desk reject rate rose to 75%. I have some thoughts.
open.substack.com/pub/hegemon/...

damnnnnnn

It's that time of year again! I'm looking for suggestions of 'emerging' model organisms for my #CellBio course's final proj:

Organism nomination form here (links to blog on proj info): forms.office.com/r/v8zYgqVe8W

#cellbiology #biology #academicsky #microsky #archaeasky #protistsonsky 🧪 (1/n)

Cleaning up the desktop on my laptop and found this #ggplot2 #rstats

Thought I would share an SEM image of a Meringosphaera I picked at Klubban (West Coast of Sweden) for my first post on Bluesky :) #protistsonsky

New preprint out! Using ~75k environmental OTUs + 77 fossil calibrations, we reconstructed a Proterozoic timeline of eukaryote evolution. Our results show crown eukaryotes were already diversifying >1.6 Ga, long before the first undisputed fossils (~1.05 Ga).
🔗 DOI: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Constructing a “periodic table” of bacteria to map diversity in trait space Abstract. Despite an ever-expanding number of bacterial taxa being discovered, many of these taxa remain uncharacterized with unknown traits and environmen

New paper up - inspired by the periodic table of the elements, we attempted to organize bacterial diversity in genome-inferred trait space academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

🖥🧬🦠

Single-particle genomics uncovers abundant non-canonical marine viruses from nanolitre volumes Nature Microbiology - Environmental micro-compartment genomics provides efficient and high-throughput single-particle DNA sequencing that captures overlooked members of microbial communities.

🚀 New in @natmicrobiol.nature.com
EMCG — droplet-based single-particle genomics method 🧬⚠️Sequencing marine microbes one by one — in nL of seawater!

Ultra-high resolution — no culture, no bulk averaging. A new way to see the invisible 🫥 🌊 rdcu.be/eOsUF #protistsonsky @bigelowlab.bsky.social

A Novel Protistan Trait Database Reveals Functional Redundancy and Complementarity in Terrestrial Protists(Amoebozoa and Rhizaria)
#protists #eukaryotes #amoeba
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

High‐Temporal Resolution of Microbial Food Web Dynamics and Structure During Phytoplankton Blooms in the Baltic Sea Heterotrophic nanoflagellates are typically considered to be bacterial grazers, but some are actually omnivores and predators, both eating also other eukaryotes. Thanks to a high-frequency sampling c...

Our new paper on what heterotrophic nanoflagellates do in nature doi.org/10.1111/1462... or www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/.... Data available at doi.org/10.5281/zeno.... Funded by @ncn.gov.pl #ProtistsOnSky

I had the honor of designing a field guide that spotlights 222 species of pollinators in Portugal. These creatures play a vital role in our ecosystems, supporting over 75% of agricultural crops. Yet, their populations are declining, a reality that makes this guide more urgent than ever.

MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025 receives record number of 17,058 proposals This year’s annual MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships call has attracted considerable interest from the research community with 17,058 proposals submitted.

Applications for MCSA are up 64%! 50% now come from outside the EU. Trump effect?

The European Research market just got a hell of a lot more crowded.

EU should turn on the tap

marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/news/msca-po...

a huge effort and a huge service!

Metalog: curated and harmonised contextual data for global metagenomics samples Abstract. Metagenomic sequencing enables the in-depth study of microbes and their functions in humans, animals, and the environment. While sequencing data

Great to see this finally published!

Metalog: curated and harmonised contextual data for global metagenomics samples

now out in @narjournal.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

Perfect bird design 10/10 peak A+ no notes #birds 🗺️

hay alguna noticia al respeto para enterarme con más detalle? Muchas gracias

A map from the Economist, of how dumplings spread from Italy to Japan by way of the Mongolian Empire

Maybe my favorite Food Map, ever.

Just learned you can convert JPG to PNG in R with {magick}. Did you know this? #rstats

This was such a neat study it got posted twice on our 'cool papers' channel in lab slack 😅

#ProtistsonSky