Congrats Pedro and Alex!!

I would be very surprised to see any meaningful impact of “cheating” (I even do not like the word) in multicellularity origins!! So, looking forward!

In our latest study, we show that HGT of the ccyA gene from cyanobacteria enables some methanotrophic Methylococcaceae gammaproteobacteria to synthesize intracellular amorphous calcium carbonate (iACC) inclusions.

enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I can imagine! Cheating was probably negligible.

Great work @wcratcliff.bsky.social et al. on the opportunity cost of soma in simple multicellular organisms! I like the core theoretical idea!
It will be interesting to see how far this framing generalizes beyond green algae. Do more complex multicellulars show the same pattern, and is it causal?

Check the summary (in Spanish) by @irenedelrey.bsky.social on our work on plasmalogen biosynthesis pathway evolution in eukaryotes. #protistsOnSky

Why does cancer arise across such diverse life forms? The answer lies in evolution. This @royalsocietypublishing.org issue shows how cancer emerges as a breakdown of cooperation in multicellular organisms. @multicellgenome.bsky.social @mkhochb.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1...

So you are using IQ-TREE to estimate a tree for "deep time" phylogenetics using amino acid alignments. There is a lot of confusion about how to test model fit. Here are some suggestions.

🔬👥 Us convidem a reviure els millors moments dels #25anysICREA!

Gairebé 250 #RecercairesICREA van celebrar el creixement d’aquesta comunitat interdisciplinar que empeny les fronteres del coneixement.

No et perdis la crònica i el vídeo resum.👇

icreat.cat/25-anys-icrea/

Ichthyosporea: a window into the origin of animals - Communications Biology Ichthyosporea are unicellular eukaryotes crucial for understanding animal origins and evolution. This Review outlines the history and recent advancements in ichthyosporean biology, genomics, and genet...

full paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s42... @icreacommunity.bsky.social @csic.es

#Ichthyosporea are not just the 5–6 species we and others have helped establish as models. Our recent synthesis suggests that ~95% of their species-level diversity remains uncultivated. In other words, we still know only a fraction of the map! #protistsonSky @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social @prbb.org

So happy to see our work finally published in @pnas.org! 🥳

This project was a deep dive into convergent evolution, HGT, and gene fission. It shows how messy and beautiful evolution can be.

Huge thanks to the amazing team involved!

Read the full paper here:
🔗 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

so nice!!

A smartphone analogy to explore the origin of animals - The EMBO Journal How animals evolved from their unicellular ancestor is a fundamental biological question. The fact that all animals are monophyletic—sharing a single common ancestor—implies their origin from unicellu...

If we find a novel organism branching between protists and animals, is it a #protist or an #animal? 🤔
We here suggest that if it has 3 cell types, a polarized outer layer, a feeding opening, and responsive behavior, then it is an animal! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Today the EMBO Journal special issue on molecular ecology and evolution is finally published.
It was a pleasure coordinating this collection together with @berndpulverer.bsky.social and many outstanding authors.
Editorial: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Cover art by @munafomarzia.bsky.social

Cheaper and sustainable transfection is always a good thing! Thanks @frutag33.bsky.social for sharing this! #choanoflagellates #protistsonSky #nonmodels

✨Our preprint about the evolution and origins of the aerobic plasmalogen biosynthesis pathway is now published in @pnas.org !

🧫Our beloved myxobacteria share more than we think with eukaryotes

Great collaboration with @multicellgenome.bsky.social and @jtrinidad13.bsky.social

It was a pleasure working with such a group of people lead by Montse with @jtrinidad13.bsky.social @irenedelrey.bsky.social @konsmitsi.bsky.social @sebasn1.bsky.social and others!

link 👉https://pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2529738123
@pnas.org

We also directly detected plasmalogens in our beloved Chromosphaera perkinsii and Capsaspora.
#ichthyosporeans #holozoans #protistsonSky #LGT
@ibe-barcelona.bsky.social @prbb.org @icreacommunity.bsky.social @csic.es

Many cellular innovations later used by animals were assembled long before animals evolved.We show that aerobic plasmalogen biosynthesis likely entered eukaryotes early from Myxobacteria, highlighting how bacterial genes shaped the cellular landscape from which animals emerged. 🧬✨ #protistsOnSky

Behind our research on animal origins are many brilliant women scientists.
Happy International Women’s Day 💜 #protistsOnSky @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social @csic.es @csicdivulga.bsky.social @prbb.org @icreacommunity.bsky.social #InternationalWomensDay
#WomenInScience

Indeed! no worries! I thought you never got it. I tried calling you too and I failed....but better late than never! 😀

Aggregation, choanoflagellates and extreme environments! Cool story!

congrats Núria, Thibaut, Josean et al! and thank you! 🙏You know how much we like aggregation! 😀

yes! Maybe we should have changed it to another one, but that seemed to fit better

The Magnificent 8 YouTube video by Multicellgenome Lab

We know their DNA.
We know where they live.
But we have no idea what they look like.

The search for the 8 missing lineages closest to animals #ProtistsonSky
@icreacommunity.bsky.social @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social @prbb.org @csicdivulga.bsky.social

youtu.be/i4uhEXw6G0c

Our latest preprint: Together with the team of Jan Löwe, @danieltamarit.bsky.social and many others we discovered and characterized several Asgard tubulin genes and propose that microtubule architecture and dynamics evolved in Asgard archaea prior to eukaryogenesis
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

In this review we map the journey to animal multicellularity and define three extinct ancestral stages:
🔹 LUAA: Last Unicellular Animal Ancestor.
🔹 FACA: First Animal Common Ancestor.
🔹 LACA: Last Animal Common Ancestor.
Check it out: bit.ly/4azuLVY @embojournal.org

Happy Valentine’s Day 💘
20 years ago we fell for a lineage nobody was studying.
Still in love.
Still discovering.
#ichthyosporeans #LoveIsInTheCell 🧬 #protistsonSky @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social @prbb.org @csic.es @icreacommunity.bsky.social

Buenísimo Sergio! & thanks! 📱🦠 But then, we have outsourcing. We argue that animals outsourced metabolic costs (losing genes for amino acids) to their food. Smartphones ffloaded data/processing to the Cloud. The goal of the analogy isn't to fit perfectly, but to show us where the new questions are!