Identification of hot spring Obelisk-like RNA replicons and expanded diversity of the Obelisk superfamily - Nature Communications In this study, the authors identify circular RNAs replicating in high-temperature hot spring environments and demonstrate that ccc RNA replicons belonging to the Obelisk superfamily are more diverse and widespread than previously recognized, revealing hidden RNA systems in natural environments.

Identification of hot spring Obelisk-like RNA replicons and expanded diversity of the Obelisk superfamily | Nature Communications https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-71096-6

Definitely very interesting.

Living together: evolutionary and ecological dimensions of protist endosymbiosis From symbionts to organelles: evolutionary integration of microbial partners into eukaryotic cells.

academic.oup.com/microlife/ar...
#protistsonsky

An illustration of an apical region of an animal cell in cross section, shown crowded with individual molecules. The plasma membrane is densely occupied by influenza virus glycoproteins, and from the surface bud influenza virions with different morphologies (L-R): spherical, bacilliform, filamentous with a genome, filamentous and empty, filamentous with a helical inner layer, and filamentous with a cofilactin cytoskeleton.

🚨New pre-print!🚨
Because influenza virions are highly variable in form no single method can show their molecular architecture in detail. Here, we integrate multiple structural and compositional approaches to identify new features of these beautiful virus particles
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Sharing the latest preprint from our lab where we identify pervasive presence of Genomic Islands (GIs) in diverse giant viruses and characterize their functions and origins - leveraging cultured isolate genomes and long-read sequenced giant virus genomes.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Diversity-generating retroelements for programmable targeted hypermutagenesis - Nature Biotechnology Diversity-generating retroelements are engineered for directed evolution in E.coli.

🔈Paper out! We turned the most fascinating phage host-switch mechanism, diversity-generating retroelements, into a programmable mutagenesis tool, DGRec. You can perform targeted hypermutation of any 50-200bp sequence directly in vivo in E. coli www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Finally published. Many thanks to a wonderful collaborative team and scientific platforms!!! And thanks to editors and reviewers for enthusiasm and a great review.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Finally published at long last (at least in the pre-view version). Explore the wild and woolly world of archaeal histones! Interactive archaeal histone graph incluced rdcu.be/fdFjv. Congratulations to first author Shawn Laursen

Unfalsifiable by Design: A Year of Trying and Failing to Reproduce a Human Microbiome and Autism Study The myth of open data, reproducibility, responsibility, and accountability in science, and your role in it

How every layer of science's "self-correcting machinery" failed when Iva Veseli and I simply wanted to reproduce the findings of a high-profile study on gut microbiome and autism:

merenlab.org/2026/04/15/u...

a simplified evolutionary tree of eukaryotes with pictures of various microbes

New #ISEPpapers #preprint by @deemteam.bsky.social: Re-evaluating the eukaryotic Tree of Life with independent phylogenomic data www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#Protists #Microbes #Evolution #Eukaryotes #TreeOfLife #Phylogeny #Phylogenomics #Bioinformatics #Algae

The Social Lives of Viruses is coming to Vancouver, Canada, from 4th-8th August 2026!

This is a free meeting dedicated to all aspects of virus-virus interactions & evolution.

To apply: socialviruses.zoology.ubc.ca

@sociovirology.bsky.social #socialviruses #evosky #lovevirology #virosky

📣Please check out our latest preprint on the #structure, stability and specificity of the type II secretion pilus. #nmr #cryoEM
Great collab with the teams of @oliverafr.bsky.social Nilges @pasteur.fr @ipdbsc.bsky.social @cnrsbiologie.bsky.social
Egelman, Shevchik
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Out now at PLoS Pathogens @plos.org. Nice collaboration with @danielhurdiss.bsky.social @utrechtvirology.bsky.social. Some beautiful glycoproteomics work by @tshamorkina.bsky.social mapping N- and O-glycan shield of coronaviruses infecting whales and dolphins 🐋🐬🐳.
journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

VIRUS on the BEACH made the buzzzz
We therefore extended the deadline for abstract submission till April 30th
Come join us and remember
“Fun Science & Cool Ambiance”

isdv2026.com/submissions

Want to annotate a bacterial genome with structures?

@oschwengers.bsky.social bakta and @gbouras13.bsky.social phold got together, and the result is Baktfold: protein annotation across the microbial tree of life using structures

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#phagesky #microsky #microbiomesky

Phage receptor prediction from genome sequencing alone. Bacterial receptor (blue) interacting with phage proteins (purple) is shown here

📣Huge preprint 🔔
Today we share something our group has been working toward for a long time, led by @lucasmoriniere.bsky.social We asked can we predict which receptor a phage targets from its genome sequence alone? For most phages, we couldn’t. So Lucas set out to do something I had only dreamed of.

Last chance !!!
VIRUS ON THE BEACH
Fun Science, Fun Ambiance
Join us now

isdv2026.com

The DNA Polymerase Meeting is a biennial international conference that brings together scientists from around the globe to discuss the latest discoveries in the field of DNA polymerases and their role in DNA replication and repair. Topics will span from fundamental mechanistic insights into polymerase structure and function to cutting-edge applications in biotechnology, medicine, and synthetic biology. DNA polymerases are not only essential for maintaining genome integrity under diverse cellular conditions, but they have also become indispensable tools in molecular biology and technology—powering PCR, sequencing, genome editing, aptamer generation and diagnostic innovations. The past seven conferences held in Ascona, Madrid, Cambridge, Biarritz, Leiden, Stockholm, and Warsaw were extremely successful, fostering collaborations and advancing the field. We are delighted to continue this tradition with the upcoming meeting in Paris, scheduled for Sep 28th to Oct 1st 2026.

🧬 8th DNA Polymerases Meeting

📅 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2026, Paris

An international conference on DNA polymerases: replication, repair, genome integrity, and applications in PCR, sequencing, genome editing and diagnostics.

Register now ↘️ www.8th-dna-polymerases.conferences-pasteur.org

Extensive array of endogenous giant viral elements in a polar alga shows dynamic transcriptional response to abiotic stress Schultz et al. show that polar algae harbor extensive endogenous giant virus elements that are transcriptionally active, stress responsive, and integrated into host regulatory networks, highlighting v...

Excited to share our lab's new paper in Current Biology featuring MS student Sydney Schultz's work. We show that a polar alga carries large amount of giant viral DNA in its genome, and many of the viral genes respond to stress - with implications for host adaptation.

www.cell.com/current-biol...

We have just published a short note on archaeal phylogeny: complex mixture models support a deep placement of Methanonatronarchaeia within Euryarchaea and indicate that three recently described groups (Halorutilales, Afararchaeaceae, and Ordosarchaeia) are actually the same.

shorturl.at/5GMpU

Excited to share the first preprint from the lab! We show that ApeA defends against RNA phage infection by cleaving the phage genome:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Life's a continuum of organisms - from independently mobile bits of genomes, through viruses, to organelles, to barely non-organellar symbiotes, to cells. That are mostly not independent either.

Saw this correction only now. Should read more closely. :-)

Plant virus movement proteins originated from jelly-roll capsid proteins Movement proteins, a signature of plant RNA and DNA viruses, enable cell-to-cell movement of the virus via plasmodesmata channels. This study shows that the most common movement proteins of the 30K su...

The authors do not claim that ALL SJR CPs evolved from 30K MPs, only those of certain umbra-like viruses. In all lokelihood, the overall directionality appears to be from SJR CP to 30K MP: doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Fellows The European Academy of Microbiology (EAM) proudly brings together a distinguished community of leading scientists whose contributions have shaped and advanced the field of microbiology. Below, you wi...

The list of new (2026) elected members of the @femsmicro.org European Academy of Microbiology is out 👏 Congrats to the newcomers, most of them very well-known names incl many friends & close colleagues 😀 fems-microbiology.org/european-aca...

Structural and phylogenetic analyses of umbravirus and umbra-like virus genomes suggest evolution of capsid-like proteins from 30K movement proteins | Journal of Virology The key defining feature of plant viruses is their encoding of movement proteins (MPs), with most from a superfamily of MPs known as 30K. It has been proposed that 30K MPs evolved from capsid proteins...

Structural and phylogenetic analyses of umbravirus and umbra-like virus genomes suggest evolution of capsid-like proteins from 30K movement proteins journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

QR code to access 'Structural diversification of phage tail fibres enables recognition of diverse type IV pili'

New paper showing how tailed #phages recognize diverse #Pseudomonas #T4P! Outstanding work by PhD candidate Ikram Qaderi, building on work started a decade ago during my sabbatical in the McArthur lab and in collaboration with the Guarné lab, now at #McGill. @mcmasteriidr.bsky.social

Local agricultural transition, crisis and migration in the Southern Andes - Nature In the Uspallata Valley, agriculture was adopted by local populations, as evidenced by genetic continuity from earlier hunter-gatherers to farmers; maize-dependent groups from the same regional p...

How did farming reach the Southern Andes? Through migration or cultural transmission? Our new paper in @nature.com combines ancient DNA, isotopes, archaeology & paleoclimate to reconstruct 2,000+ years of history in Uspallata, Mendoza.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A Thread🧵 (1/25+)

New preprint from the Sternberg lab!
We used pooled oligonucleotide library mutagenesis + high-throughput sequencing to systematically dissect the molecular determinants of IStron transposition, RNA-guided DNA cleavage, and self-splicing.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Living patescibacterial (CPR) cells are a rare sight! Meet Strigamonas methylophilicida, a parasite of methylotrophic proteobacteria we just described in our latest paper:

doi.org/10.1128/mbio...