Systematic identification of cell division proteins in haloarchaea and the discovery of a membrane anchor for the Z ring https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.16.738847v1

Some bacteria do not live as individuals. They build multicellular filaments and connect neighboring cells through tiny cell-cell junctions. Cyanobacteria are among the most beautiful examples 😍 In our new paper, we reveal first molecuar insights on the cyanobacterial septal junction architecture 🧵

🚨 New in @natmicrobiol.nature.com! We reveal how the antibiotic target PBP1b fortifies the E.coli division site against osmotic rupture. Proud this was completed in our independent labs @dmf-unil.bsky.social, with @avettiger.bsky.social. Congratulations to all authors! 🦠❄️🔬 #teamtomo bit.ly/3SCbOg1 👇

ohhhhh man it is another amazing paper from @masarunobu.bsky.social that's a Microgenomates growing on a Chloroflexi:

Diese ausführliche und äußerst informative Dokumentation zeigt, welche Rolle Stickstoffdünger in der Landwirtschaft spielen und wie die Arbeit von Thomas Ott und seinem Team dazu beiträgt, die Lebensmittelproduktion nachhaltiger zu machen. Schauen Sie doch mal rein! 🌱🍅🧪

Excited to share our new preprint! 🧬❄️ by brilliant @mdreimann.bsky.social and great collaborators! Using cryo-ET&EM, we reveal archaeal chromatin in a near-native state: variable-beads-on-a-string fibers shaped by growth phase and histone composition #ArchaeaSky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A multilayered cell envelope of a member of the Chloroflexota offers an anchoring platform for the archaellum #microbiology #archaea #bacteria #MicroSky doi.org/10.3389/fmic...

🛠️💉It's time for engineering contractile injection systems! @chipericson.bsky.social & @davidschaumann.bsky.social introduce programmable CIS - PROCIS, combining tail length control, non-native cargo loading, and cell retargeting all in one system! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵 1/5

Active virus-host system in a Lokiarchaeon culture www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Led by Hannah Ochner, @tbharat-lab.bsky.social’s group have developed correlated #cryoEM & mass spectrometry imaging, capable of sub-cellular chemical mapping. With @kiranrpatil.bsky.social’s group, they have imaged the cellular uptake of forever chemicals. mrclmb.ac.uk/news-events/... #LMBResearch

My first story about Archaea cell division comes out !!! A three protein system (Dip system) positions H. volcanii divisome to midcell. Dip system works like bacterial Min sytem, but they share NO sequence homology "All roads lead to Rome😊".

How do archaea find mid cell? They invent their own new system! Check out the preprint and admire those beautiful fluorescence images of @weiwaer.bsky.social Happy to have been part of it🎉

A conserved oscillatory system that positions the divisome in Archaea https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.19.726155v1

Our paper examining the evolution of halophily in DPANN is out now in MBE! academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

Recent advances in integrative cryoEM/ET toward visualizing the molecular sociology of cellular organelles pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42134003/ #cryoem

Cool discovery. Hydrogenobodies in rumen protozoa support methanogenesis #MicroSky 🧪 #ArchaeaSky www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Do biofilms give an ecological advantage? Yes! A fantastic follow-up to our previous biofilm work in ammonia-oxidizing archaea: "Biofilm Lifestyle Drives Ecophysiological Niche Expansion in an Archaeal Soil Nitrifier" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Congratulations to all authors! #archaea

Some archaea like coffee too 🤓☕️ Using coffee waste as feedstock for continuous cultivation of Sulfolobus acidocaldarius #microbiology #archaea #coffee #Sulfolobus #MicroSky #ArchaeaSky www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Do #archaea and #bacteria follow the same evolutionary "rules" when moving into a host🧐? Our latest study shows striking parallels in how intestinal and endosymbiotic archaea evolved compared to bacteria! #microbiology #methanogens @microbiomej.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Indeed, a lot of fun, and I would have not thought that I would publish anything about the bindosome ever again! 😁

You ever wondered whether your favorite archaeon has a surface structure or even an archaellum? Say no more! We screened for the presence of archaeal TFF machineries in all archaeal phyla and help you with that! Check it out here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... (1/n)

Bridging the membrane lipid divide: bacteria of the FCB group superphylum have the potential to synthesize archaeal ether lipids pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Now out in its final form! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

1/ Excited to share our preprint! 🥳 Degradation of aromatic compounds, including BTEX pollutants, requires highly endergonic aromatic ring reduction. Using #cryoEM and in situ #cryoET, we show how BCRII couples electron bifurcation modules in one giant redox machine www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How do “LEGO-like” electron-bifurcating modules combine to drive degradation in BTEX-contaminated ecosystems? Check out our latest preprint, where we use cryo-EM and cryo-ET to reveal how the 1 MDa BCRII complex powers extremely endergonic aromatic ring reduction. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

One of biggest mysteries in biology: how did complex eukaryotic cells evolve from simple microbes? ~1.8 billion years ago, an archaeal cell likely merged with a bacterium to form the first eukaryotic cell, but can we ever find direct evidence of this transformative event? 🦠 🚶‍♂️

Hong's @bdyxwh.bsky.social paper is out with help from @sshamphavi.bsky.social and @archaellum.bsky.social. We discovered a link between nuclear actin and YAP/TAZ: G-actin forms a complex with YAP-TEAD for transcription. academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Horizontal gene transfer is often depicted as a process distributing pre-existing functions to novel genetic backgrounds. Yet HGT can also increase the rate of functional innovation after transfer. Here's a brief review on the topic: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... #evosky #microsky

Our Review Article is online! We are happy to share our summary about molecular and cellular biological discoveries in archaea that have long foreshadowed a close relationship to eukaryotes, which is now so well manifested in the Asgard archaea. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

🧵 1/10 New paper out in @natmicrobiol.nature.com from my postdoc at @mib-wur.bsky.social! 🎉 How eukaryote-like was the archaeal ancestor of eukaryotes? Sequence searches alone can't tell us — so we used protein structure prediction to look deeper. 🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Prediction of eukaryotic cellular complexity in Asgard archaea using structural modelling www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

Diversity, ecology, cell biology and evolution of the Asgard archaea #microbiology #archaea #eukaryotes #evolution #MicroSky #ArchaeaSky @natrevmicro.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧵 Proud to present a tour de force by postdoc @gregbwhitfield.bsky.social solving the mystery of how bacterial Tad pili can extend and retract with a single motor ATPase. Great collaboration with Lynne Howell, @dr-lori-burrows.bsky.social, @ianyyen.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Very cool work led by @diorgeps.bsky.social from the labs of @archaeon-alex.bsky.social & Joey Davis (MIT)! They solved the Haloferax volcanii ribosome and characterize AHA, a conserved archaeal hibernation factor. With several recent related preprints, it’s an exciting moment for the field!

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

Here's the preprint. Looking forward to seeing what the type 4 filament community thinks! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 20/20

Contractile Injection Systems - Hot Springs - cryoET: Read the final version of our paper here: academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc... #microsky #teamtomo

Postdoc position on Asgard archaea in Thiago’s new lab for someone well trained in biochemistry, cloning, and protein purification: international.au.dk/about/profil...

This work started as a bachelor project and @1nussi1.bsky.social and @felixgrunberger.bsky.social showed that CsmR is a very interesting regulator important for controlling motiliy and cellshape in Haloferax volcanii. The preprint is out now: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

FoldMason is out now in @science.org. It generates accurate multiple structure alignments for thousands of protein structures in seconds. Great work by Cameron L. M. Gilchrist and @milot.bsky.social. 📄 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🌐 search.foldseek.com/foldmason 💾 github.com/steineggerla...

Archaea may not be well known, nor well studied, but these microorganisms can live in the most extreme environments, but also right on our skin. They’re everywhere. EMBL researchers are now exploring their unique ecosystem adaptability and link to evolution. www.embl.org/news/science...

The origin of eukaryotic cells continues to be one of the greatest mysteries in biology. EMBL Grenoble is excited to welcome Florian Wollweber, who will use cutting-edge imaging techniques to study Asgard archaea — microbes closely related to our earliest ancestors. 🦠🔬 www.embl.org/news/people-...

Trump has been in office for one year. We at @nature.com did a deep dive looking at the administration's disruption of science in numbers. Take a look—the numbers are staggering. By me, @dangaristo.bsky.social, Jeff Tollefson, @kimay.bsky.social, & help from @noamross.net @scott-delaney.bsky.social

Congrats! It has been a pleasure to have you in the lab and I am lokking forward seeing what you will achieve in the future!

Finally done! Huge thanks to @sfb1381.bsky.social @archaellum.bsky.social at the @biologyunifreiburg.bsky.social and @uni-freiburg.de and all my collaborators over the last years. It was a lot of fun 🎉🎉🎊 and now soon off to new challenges!

How did eukaryotic cells with complex architecture evolve from simpler prokaryotic cells? DNA analyses offer possible answers go.nature.com/4sEMwLH

Nice to see our story on the bacterial archaellum as one of the #editorpicks of 2025!

A big thanks to all the authors, reviewers, and readers of Nature Microbiology for their love and support throughout the year. We are on a break & will be back on Jan 2nd, in what will be a very special year for us! In the meantime, enjoy a collage made by @francoismayer.bsky.social #MicroSky 🦠

1. As we recently joined BlueSky, we want to repost this story for all newcomers! We sat down with @radler92.bsky.social to get more insight into the unique videos from his recent preprint on Promethearchaeota (formerly Asgard archaea). doi.org/10.1101/2025... (Videos and info below)

Calling all archaeal enthusiasts! 🔬🔥 From molecular machines to microbial communities, Archaea never fail to surprise us! We are excited to announce the 2026 EMBO Workshop on the Molecular Biology of Archaea, 6–10 July in Cambridge, UK! Sign up here: meetings.embo.org/event/26-arc... #ArchaeaSky