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
New OpenFold3 preview out! (OF3p2)
It closes the gap to AlphaFold3 for most modalities.
Most critically, we're releasing everything, including training sets & configs, making OF3p2 the only current AF3-based model that is functionally trainable & reproducible from scratch🧵1/9
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
I'm hiring my first postdoc! Apply by 20/4/26, position #20443. Seeking an environmental microbiologist with experience in metagenomics (preferably viromics) and molecular biology. Experience with targeted metabolomics is a plus.
international.au.dk/about/profil...
Garbage in, garbage out!
If preparing figures please consider "colorblind friendly" approaches (www.nature.com/articles/d41...). I am missing the long-wave opsin, which manifests in strange ways: I can't discern red vs. black. This dichromacy is rare and severe, but ~300 million have more common forms addressed in link.
Excited to see the major chapter of my PhD in print!
We present a massively-parallel approach for screening CRISPR edits in plants to speed up agricultural test cycles + benchmark genomic LMs.
Thanks to my fantastic co-authors and advisors. Link below!
Congratulations @wshuai.bsky.social and co-authors!
We’re excited to introduce MODIFI, our new scalable method for detecting DNA modifications in PacBio metagenomic data and estimating ECE-host linkage.
Check out the preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Apply now to attend the next EMBO Bacterial Networks meeting #EMBOBacNet
🗓️13-18 September 2026
📍Sant Feliu de Guixols, Spain
📝Program and registration info: meetings.embo.org/event/26-bac...
👩🔬Organised with co-chair @s-lab.bsky.social and ECR @coralietesseur.bsky.social
#MicroSky
Proud to share the yeast telomerase structure, led by the talented @hongmiaohu.bsky.social in collaboration with the Wellinger and Chartrand labs. Discovered 37 years ago and took us nearly 7 years but totally worth the wait 😍.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFE4...
Successful AI models are built on data that is high-quality, complete, and rich in biological context.
Basecamp Research is using PacBio HiFi sequencing to move beyond fragmented snapshots and build a richer map of biology.
Read the blog here: bit.ly/4svvj6N
#PacBio #HiFisequencing #Genomics
Marker gene phylogeny of ammonia oxidizing archaea genomes in the GlobDB annotated with their prevailing environmental categories
We now provide environmental metadata for the GlobDB genomes!
🖥️🧬🦠
More info here:
globdb.org/news
🧵
HFSP Awards now have Grant DOIs, back to 1990!
#DOI improves traceability, visibility, and connections between funding and research outcomes in the era of #OpenScience 🧪
#HFSP awardees: please include your grant DOI in publications and preprints!
#ResearchFunding #sts
This is a step forwards into the world of accurate complex models by AI m, at scale, openly distributed. Excellent work by the consortium here !
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...
AlphaFold database has entered the era of complexes. Together with NVIDIA, DeepMind and EBI, we use ColabFold, OpenFold and MMseqs2-GPU to predict ~31 million complexes (homo & hetro-dimers) resulting in 1.8 million high-quality predictions
📄 research.nvidia.com/labs/dbr/ass...
🌐 alphafold.ebi.ac.uk
Our work on bacterial Schlafens in phage defense is out today @natmicrobiol.nature.com!
Check out the final version here:
rdcu.be/e7Bmz
We are looking for postdocs and students to expand our team! Official postings are coming soon.
Please reach out if you're interested!
#phage #phagesky #microsky
Diversity, ecology, cell biology and evolution of the Asgard archaea www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs
Want epigenetic information automatically included in your sequencing runs?
HiFi sequencing detects 5mC and 6mA directly from native DNA and combines multiple passes of the same molecule to generate long reads with greater than 99.9% accuracy.
See how: bit.ly/3YSPBdo
#PacBio #HiFisequencing
1/5
Happy by a recent biorxiv pre-print about DARNA (PD-T7-3) anti-phage defense system. This system is activated by binding to ssDNA, presented by phage SSB, to cleave tRNA in the anti-codon loop.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
“The best that I can do in terms of making the next breakthrough or discovery is not to do it by myself, but to enable other scientists to do it”
— Jennifer Doudna
www.forbes.com/sites/amyfel...
Understanding how enzymes work: the journey to ensemble–function studies
febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
This is an exceptionally well written review on how enzymes work. Rather than the structure-function relationship, Herschlag & Du analyse the ensemble-function relationship
1/6) Hot off the press @natsmb.nature.com 🔥! Jasnauskaite et al. reveal how the minimal bacterial retron Eco2 defends against #phage 🛡️. Phage nucleases trigger Eco2, which cuts RNA, shuts down protein production and stops phage replication 🦠🚫. #phagesky #immunity #microbiology #cryo-em rdcu.be/e4AyH
Totally understand this feeling!
Eukaryogenesis in light of an expanded catalogue of Asgard genomes. a, Simplified, scaled timeline spanning from before the Last Asgard archaea Common Ancestor (LAsCA) to today. Thin bands mark predicted time ranges of relevant events (for example, GOE), thicker bands represent processes (for example, eukaryogenesis), and brackets indicate the period shown in b. The timeline further highlights milestones, including potential early eukaryotic fossils60 and the modern-day co-occurrence of Heimdallarchaeia and Alphaproteobacteria observed in this study (interaction likely originated earlier).
Fig. 1 | Expanded genomic diversity of Asgard archaea. a, Maximum-likelihood phylogeny based on 47 non-ribosomal markers (NM47)using the WAG + C10 + R4 model with 100 nonparametric bootstrap pseudoreplicates, including 869 Asgardarchaeota MAGs and 309 outgroup genomes. The blue branches (lower right) indicate the new Asgardarchaeota classes, Ranarchaeia, and the recently proposed Asgardarchaeia4. The concentric rings denote (in to out): the predicted genome size, metabolic guilds based on Pfam clustering, sampling locations, and black stars on the outside mark MAGs added by this study. Asgard, Asgardarchaeia; Atabey, Atabeyarchaeia; Baldr, Baldrarchaeia; Frey/Jord, Frey/Jordarchaeia; Gerd, Gerdarchaeales; Heimdall, Heimdallarchaeaceae; Hel, Helarchaeales; Hermod, Hermodarchaeia; Hod, Hodarchaeales; Kari, Kariarchaeaceae; Loki, Lokiarchaeales; Njord, Njordarchaeales; Odin, Odinarchaeia; Ran, Ranarchaeia; Sif, Sifarchaeia; Thor, Thorarchaeia; Wukong, Wukongarchaeia. b, SR4-recoded phylogeny of the same genome set inferred with the model GTR + C60 + G and 100 nonparametric bootstrap pseudoreplicates (Methods). This updated catalogue constitutes a large increase in the medium- to high-quality publicly available genomes (completeness >50% and contamination and redundancy <10%) with 65.3% from the Guaymas Basin and 34.7% from the Bohai Sea. The encircled numbers represent MAGS added by this study. The scale bars in bothsubpanels represent the average number of substitutions per site.Map created in BioRender; Appler, K. https://biorender.com/147ieoc(2025).
Our work is published today: ‘Oxygen metabolism in descendants of the archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor’. This was a huge effort lead by @katyappler.bsky.social. Extremely grateful to have been a part of this amazing project! 😊🦠🧬
Links: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
😍😍😍
New paper from my team detailing a greatly expanded genomic database of Asgard archaea revealing of high energy metabolism those related to eukaryotes! Led by @katyappler.bsky.social lots of help from @jameslingford.bsky.social @valdeanda.bsky.social @kassipan.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Beyond thrilled to share that our study has been published!
This project encompasses years of work, including my thesis research on Asgard archaea in the @archaeal.bsky.social lab at @utmsi.bsky.social and
@texasscience.bsky.social!!!
#MicroSky #ArchaeaSky 1/12
