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)

🧪🦠🌊 Curious on #niche differentiation of marine #AOA #Nitrosopumilus and #Nitrosopelagicus? #Urea is (part of) the answer! Very happy this fun study led by @mpimarinemicrobio.bsky.social is out: shorturl.at/wajjh Big shout out to Joerdis and Hannah for pushing this over the finish line!

🔮Introducing OXtal – a new all-atom diffusion model for crystal structure prediction! We tackle a grand challenge in computational chemistry: predicting the structure of crystalline solids directly from their chemical composition. Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2512.06987 Blog Post: oxtal.github.io 1/8

AITHYRA is seeking a PROCUREMENT MANAGER to establish and oversee our procurement processes, ensuring seamless support for our scientific teams. aithyra.onlyfy.jobs/job/5kc6uod5... Application deadline: 11.1.2026 #AITHYRA #ProcurementManager

AITHYRA is seeking a SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATOR to join our dynamic team and play a pivotal role in our mission. aithyra.onlyfy.jobs/job/6vqx92se Application deadline: 11.1.2026 #AITHYRA #ScientificIllustrator

🎄🧬 It’s December – time for an 'Immunocalendar': “CRISPR CRISPR KNÄUSCHEN”! Every day we open a new door onto a different prokaryotic immune system, with extra love for archaeal hosts. Crafted by the Zink Group within our department :) Have a wonderful Christmas time! ✨

Asgard on the move ! Watch our videos! Biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.30.690169v1

#Archaea, #DPANN, #phylogenetic_reconciliation New preprint online! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Phylogenetic reconciliation supports a methanogenic ancestor of the Archaea and a derived origin for host-associated lineages https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.11.687807v1

We are looking for a PhD student to work on an exciting plastid endosymbiosis in microbial eukaryotes. This position involves sampling, exciting microscopy such as CARDFISH, ExM and FIBSEM, single-cell transcriptomics and more. #protistsonsky 1/2

🧙‍♀️ Something is brewing in the WitChi cauldron… After some excellent peer review feedback, a new update of WitChi is taking shape, refining how we detect and prune compositional bias in phylogenomic alignments. Stay tuned for the next release! 🧙‍♀️ Can’t model it? Prune it! github.com/stephkoest/w...

Glad to share our paper out today @NatureEcoEvo: “Serial innovations by Asgard archaea shaped the DNA replication machinery of the early eukaryotic ancestor”. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #microsky #archaeasky

#MicroSky #mevoSky

Never thought I’d do real E. coli research, so far I used if only for cloning & protist snacks in my MSc 😅 But here I am simulating chromosomes & shuffling motifs. Watching @loreoliv.bsky.social and the lab turn those predictions into real data was pure magic.✨ Grateful to be part of this team!

Folddisco finds similar (dis)continuous 3D motifs in large protein structure databases. Its efficient index enables fast uncharacterized active site annotation, protein conformational state analysis and PPI interface comparison. 1/9🧶🧬 📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🌐 search.foldseek.com/folddisco

📢 New preprint alert! We used comparative genomics on 72,000+ bacterial genomes to uncover the genetic basis of microbial adaptation to multicellular hosts—plants and animals alike. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share our work on WitChi! 🛠️🖥️ We tested it on the GTDB r220 archaeal supermatrix (5,869 taxa & 10,101 cols) removing 55% of sites in <2h. The phylogeny showed several interesting groupings with overall improved branch support: #phylogenetics #ArchaeaSky #MSA #opensource #MEvoSky #MicroSky

I'm happy to announce the latest release of the GlobDB, available at globdb.org. The GlobDB is a database of "species dereplicated" microbial genomes, and as of release 226 contains twice the number of species-representative genomes (306,260) than the latest GTDB release.

1. 🧵 New preprint out! WitChi: a fast, open-source Python tool to detect, quantify & prune compositional bias in MSAs. Lightweight, tree-free, scalable to 5k+ taxa... so we applied it to the GTDB archaea MSA. #ArchaeaSky #MEvoSky #MicroSky 🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025... 💻 github.com/stephkoest/w...

Exciting new research! Matthias Horn & Lukas Helmlinger from #CeMESS uncover how chlamydiae thrive in social amoebae by skipping their extracellular stage. Read their groundbreaking study in Current Biology (@currentbiology.bsky.social): 🔗 cemess.univie.ac.at/news/detail-...

Excited to share our first paper on the symbiosis between chlamydiae and social amoebae showing in detail the adaptations of endosymbionts to the social life style of their host! 🎉

a midsummer night's dream or understanding chromosome organization's deep evolutionary roots #MicroSky #Archaea #ArchaeaSky #ProtistsOnSky et al.

#NewResearch 🚨Out Now Phylogenomic analyses indicate the archaeal superphylum DPANN originated from free-living euryarchaeal-like ancestors, by @bbaker24.bsky.social @deemteam.bsky.social and team #MicroSky #Archaea 🦠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New postdoc position in our lab (2 y+): evolutionary genomics of integrons and MGEs with focus on vibrio-phage interactions. Great environment @pasteur.fr for science, career building. Super collaborators @celineloot.bsky.social @amazeld.bsky.social @fredoleroux.bsky.social 3 weeks to apply!

Job alert ‼️ 2x professorships available @uniofmanchester.bsky.social - ecology www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai... - organismal biology (inc genomics, evolution etc.) www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMI506/s...

Asgard archaea have actin - but what about microtubules? Where do they come from? 🧐 Our new paper www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... by @xujwet.bsky.social & @florianwollweber.bsky.social, in collaboration with the Schleper & Wieczorek labs, describes tiny Asgard microtubules! #TeamTomo #ArchaeaSky 1/6

🚨 New paper alert! 🚨 A robustly rooted tree of eukaryotes sheds light on their deep evolutionary ancestry—suggesting that the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA) may have had an excavate-like cell architecture. 🧵🔬 (1/) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hi BlueSkyers! I'm an evolutionary biologist, microbiologist, entomologist, lover of nature, and long-time researcher on symbiosis. I'm realizing that BlueSky is useful and generally non-toxic so here I am (having quit Facebook in Jan 2017, and Twitter in Oct 2022).

(1/2) Preprint alert! In collaboration with @yifanzhou.bsky.social and @mkrupovic.bsky.social we describe host-parasite layers in hypersaline systems of the Danakil Depression. Haloarchaea host nanohaloarchea and both are infected by viruses (12 new families found). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Phylogenomic analyses reveal that Panguiarchaeum is a clade of genome-reduced Asgard archaea https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.13.637844v1

And now our department can also be followed pn Bluesky!! Follow us!!

Congratulations to our very own John van der Oost!!!! #BeijerinckPrize

Are you interested in studying archaea with their diverse symbionts? We look forward hearing from you: workingat.nioz.nl/o/postdoc-po...

Make sure to tune into Archaea Power Hour in just a few short hours! Sign up to receive the Zoom link here: t.co/b17JFAaZQ6. Checkout out our exciting schedule below:

what a nice highlight of some excellent (archaea) researchers :)

Fun little Q&A! Thank you for the opportunity Current Biology @currentbiology.bsky.social www.cell.com/current-biol...

We have an open position PhD position in a project aiming to develop novel methodologies for phylogenomic reconstruction of plasmid evolution. See details and how to apply in the Ad. Candidates who will review the relevant literature (see Ad) have a higher chance to write a successful application.

Would you expect that Bacteria use an archaellum for swimming? We didn't, but we found that some Chloroflexota do! Find the story here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A little thread below 1/n

"~demonstrating the successful expression and assembly of this (Archaeallum) machinery in Bacteria and its function in swimming motility." Horizontal gene transfer of the functional archaellum machinery to Bacteria www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Maybe time to share this feed again, as many people recently joined here. If you are interested in the wonderful world of archaea, give it a follow :) #Science #MEvoSky bsky.app/profile/did:...

#OceanOpportunities PostDoc position: Elucidate the role of archaeal symbionts in cellular evolution and ecology” - Deadline 23 February 2025 nf-pogo-alumni.org/27012025-10/

The contribution of natural transformation for the acquisition of novel genes has been notoriously difficult to quantify because it relies on recombination (which is affected by other processes). Here's a first estimate : doi.org/10.1101/2025... (for the very busy: 1-6% of gene gains) #MicroSky

join us!

Read more about the code: doi.org/10.1038/s415... Explore the SeqCode Registry: registry.seqco.de #SeqCode #Nomenclature #Genomes #Bacteria #Archaea

The Asgard archaeal origins of Arf family GTPases involved in eukaryotic organelle dynamics www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

#MicroSky #ArchaeaSky #Archaea

7️⃣3️⃣ Laura Eme @lauraeme.bsky.social (1984- ) 🇫🇷 #womeninSTEM Evolutionary biologist that studies the genomic diversity of micro-organisms in order to reconstruct the history of life. She helped to identify a new group of organisms, the Asgard archaea. emelaura.com

Wow!

Super happy to see this work finally out in @naturecomms.bsky.social! Great team effort revealing how single-stranded DNA binding protein RPA interacts with the DNA polymerases in the archaeal replisome 🧵(1/4) www.nature.com/articles/s41... @sauguet-lab.bsky.social @pasteur.fr

In case you missed it the GRC and GRS for Archaea 2025 are both open for applications! Join us in Switzerland for the latest iteration of this awesome conference! #archaeasky