We have wondered what a complex archaeal cell might look like ever since 2014. It’s been a long road (and the journey is far from over), but it’s a good time to pause for breath and look. These Asgard archaeal cells are a surprise! And that is the joy of being a cell biologist.

An Asgard archaeon with internal membrane compartments Brilliant study led by @fmacleod.bsky.social and Andriko von Kügelgen. Tight collaboration with @buzzbaum.bsky.social and lab. Congrats to all authors! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

What a gem from @dudinlab.bsky.social @gautamdey.bsky.social @centriolelab.bsky.social in Cell! Expansion microscopy atlas of >200 eukaryotes comparing cytoskeletal architectures revealing structures not seen before. Stunning visualisation! Exactly the kind of transformative cell biology we need.

🚨Our collaboration with @centriolelab.bsky.social & @gautamdey.bsky.social is out today in @cp-cell.bsky.social We show that #Expansion #Microscopy is a broad-spectrum modality for Euks, enabling 3D phenotypic maps rooted to phylogeny. #ProtistsOnSky #SciComm #SciSky www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Fruit flies are more than pests! Humans share 60% of their genome with them. @luisapallares.bsky.social busts myths about how these tiny creatures can tell us about human diseases. Watch Luisa's full video here: www.fml.tuebingen.mpg.de/71433/videos #BiologyMyths #Drosophila #Genomics

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

Our Pyrodictium cannulae paper is out in its final form! Cannulae assemble into calcium-stabilized tubular filaments stable at 100 °C—a unique archaeal cell–cell connection. Led brilliantly by @mikesleutel.bsky.social & @vinceconticello.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-64120-8

Look at this nice cover: beautiful archaella, image made by @sshamphavi.bsky.social ! Thanks also to Marta Rodeiguez for keeping the EM im shape in @ottlab.bsky.social lab! At @biologyunifreiburg.bsky.social at @uni-freiburg.de @sfb1381.bsky.social @cibss.bsky.social

So happy to see my first first-author paper published! 🎈 A short thread on how Ectocarpus and its TE secrets have kept me busy lately: rdcu.be/eITQH

EXCITING NEWS!! We're searching for a new professor colleague at the Biozentrum🇨🇭. Ideal candidates are exploring novel biological questions with structure, biophysics, or high-resolution imaging. 🧪 🧶🧬 🔬 The call closes Nov 3. Please get in touch if you would like more information. Come join us! 👩‍🔬🤓

New Insights Into Bacterial Motility and DNA Transfer: a small press on our discovery of ComFB signaling family by @claussenarne.bsky.social @hhu.de www.eurekalert.org/news-release... w/ @mygalperin.bsky.social @thethormannden.bsky.social @cmfi.bsky.social @mibinet.bsky.social @sfb1381.bsky.social

Registration deadline for @embo.org workshop EvoChromo extended until September 30. meetings.embo.org/event/24-evo...

Busting myths with @jweir.bsky.social. Did you know you don't inherit exactly 1/4 of your DNA from each grandparent? Or that fertility issues can affect young people, too? Find out more: www.fml.tuebingen.mpg.de/71433/videos #BiologyMyths

Super glad to contribute to this study on chromatin evolution in brown algae! Special thanks to Jeromine Vigneau, @borglab.bsky.social and Susana Coelho for making this happen. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We discovered a new family of c-di-NMP receptors, widespread in bacteria & regulating🦠motility @pnas.org A great collab. w/ @mygalperin.bsky.social @vikramalva.bsky.social @thethormannden.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @hhu.de @cmfi.bsky.social @sfb1381.bsky.social @mibinet.bsky.social

And here is the published version of the work from @selimlab.bsky.social, @mygalperin.bsky.social, Dubnau labs and @thethormannden.bsky.social labs (superb collaboration) ComFB, a widespread family of c-di-NMP receptor proteins www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Who would have thought I would ever publish an article about a bacterium? But here it is, but of course only because Litorilinea aerophilum actually has an archaellum! Here is what we learned about its cell structure and other surface appendages: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Archaea are often surrounded by bacteria. But is there ever active conflict between the two? Can archaea kill bacteria? If so, how do they do it? Work by @romainstrock.bsky.social shows that some archaea can kill bacteria by secreting peptidoglycan hydrolases. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

our paper is online! rdcu.be/exXBX . Who would have thought that some #giantviruses not only have #histones, but even histone variants that make weird #nucleosomes (pdb 9CVT). Fantastic work from Ale Villalta and Chelsea Toner, with Hugo Bisio @molbiolgv.bsky.social and Chantal Abergel

#MicroSky Summer read! Predatory bacteria kill and eat other bacteria. Their deadly actions come in many flavors, often via direct physical contact between predator & prey 🧛 How do they do it? Our review 📖 @coralietesseur.bsky.social @ysantin.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

And the story is published now!🍾 www.nature.com/articles/s41... Open access link: rdcu.be/exnOc Many years in the making, great collaboration with @archaellum.bsky.social & @tunglejic.bsky.social Thanks @ukri.org BBSRC & @leverhulme.ac.uk for funding, reviewers & editor!! 🙏 #microsky #archaeasky

Boehringer Ingelheim Stiftung has committed €7 million to the EMBL Imaging Centre. That means more opportunities to create groundbreaking, next-gen imaging technologies and provide the necessary support so European life scientists can benefit. www.embl.org/news/connect...

Grateful to the folks @CurrentBiology.bsky.social for the fun Q&A! Come for the beetles, stay for the symbionts — and forgive the basketball detour 🪲🦠🏀 www.cell.com/current-biol...

🎉Congratulations to @caroleduchene.bsky.social, recipient of the 2025 "Grandes Avancées françaises en biologie" from @academiesciences.bsky.social for her research on how microalgae navigate ocean depths. Learn more: s.gwdg.de/FxdLh8 #Microalgae #ScienceAwards Photos © Académie des sciences

EMBO is delighted to announce that this year the EMBO Gold Medal is awarded to Tanmay Bharat @tbharat-lab.bsky.social ‬ @mrclmb.bsky.social and David Bikard @dbikard.bsky.social @pasteur.fr for their remarkable contributions to the #LifeSciences. www.embo.org/press-releas... #award 🧪

Now online - the Review "Histone-mediated chromatin organization in prokaryotes and viruses" from @samuelschwab.bsky.social‬ @vikramalva.bsky.social @damelab.bsky.social‬ and co. #histones #DNAorganization #chromatin #eukaryogenesis Read it here 👉 authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

new preprint alert from the lab: bringing some order into the wide and wild diversity of archaeal histones. Who has acidic histones? who has multiple histones? what histone combinations do archaea employ and why? find all of this and more here www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share our latest review on histone-mediated chromatin organization in prokaryotes and viruses! 🧬 @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social

📣📣We are #hiring! 📣Please RT! @mpipz.bsky.social has a group leader position available in the broad area of Plant Development and Diversity 🌿. Apply now!🌿 👉http://bit.ly/4nkUvLa #plantsci

We have a 3-year funded postdoc position to work on structures of #amyloid filaments. If you are an expert in protein biochemistry, structural biology or #cryoEM / #cryoET, this could be for you! Feel free to email me with any questions. Come join us! 🤩 www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Structure of the virulence-associated Neisseria meningitidis filamentous bacteriophage MDAphi Out in @pnas.org Congrats @janboehning.bsky.social @abultarafder.bsky.social Miles Graham @mathieucoureuil.bsky.social @mrclmb.bsky.social @hopitalnecker.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Asgard chromatin with both hypernucleosome and octasome-like forms! Brilliant work — congrats to all authors!

On this UN’s International #BiodiversityDay, we look fwd to celebrating the Institute’s Diversity Day (27 May). The 2025 talks include “DNA, Drama & (cell) Division,” “Plants & Pathogen Prediction,” “Algae Genomes & Diversity,” & “Plasticity & Communities.” Here’s a look back at 2024 events.

In our latest preprint we used cryoEM to solve the structure of A-ENA fibers and show that they are stabilized by 10 isopeptide bonds per monomer. A-ENA couples the spore to the cry-toxins, and in doing so increases the virulence of Bacillus thuringiensis: www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6...

‪Come along to this Friday's Distinguished Speaker Seminar Series talk, this week to be delivered by Prof. Kevin Foster from the University of Oxford ▶️More info: shorturl.at/C9YIS 📆: Friday 23rd May at 3pm 📍: MPI-IS seminar room (ground floor) #DSSS

Excited to share our new preprint on HLp—a bacterial histone from Leptospira perolatii that forms stable tetramers and wraps ~60 bp of DNA: "DNA Wrapping by a Tetrameric Bacterial Histone" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social

May 18 is Fascination of Plants Day! Visit us on this occasion in the New Botanical Garden in Tübingen. There will be an exciting program for young and old! 🗓 May 18, 12:00 noon - 4:00 p.m. 📷 Neuer Botanischer Garten, Auf der Morgenstelle, Tübingen #plantday @ZMBP_Tuebingen

We are looking for a postdoctoral fellow to join us to explore telomerase regulation by histones. Please get in touch if this may interest you.

Excited to see this beautiful work from @bupbuse.bsky.social and @tbharat-lab.bsky.social now out in @plosbiology.org! It maps the ultrastructural topology of the C. glutamicum cell surface, including its patchy S-layer. Delighted to be part of this story.

The page for the EMBO multicellularity meeting organized by @multicellgenome.bsky.social , @martaalvarez.bsky.social and colleagues is online! #multicellularity #protists meetings.embo.org/event/25-mul...

After 21 years at my dream job, I’m very sad to announce my early retirement from the National Institutes of Health. My life’s work has been to scientifically study how our food environment affects what we eat, and how what we eat affects our physiology.

One of the best meetings ever I've attended, the first African Plant Genomics Symposium plantgenomicsafrica.org I met so many inspiring colleagues, both senior and junior. Thank you @drpchronicles.bsky.social for having the idea & being the primary organizer!

New online! Growing together under pressure

When the pressure is on, Archaea go multicellular! A new @science.org study reveals surprising organizational capacity in archaea. 🍞“It’s like rising sourdough loaf”: tinyurl.com/yc2nxmr6 #Archaea #Multicellularity @archaeon-alex.bsky.social @tbharat-lab.bsky.social @vikramalva.bsky.social

🚨MPI Biology Tübingen is actively recruiting #Postdocs through our #PostdocProgram. postdocprogram.mpg.de We have 5 projects within the Departments of Complex Biological Interactions, Integrative Evolutionary Biology & Algal Development and Evolution. 5 weeks left till the deadline! Please share

Absolutely thrilled that Dennis Gaitsgory from the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics has won the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in #Mathematics for his central role in the proof of the geometric #Langlands conjecture! Congratulations!🥳This is such a well-deserved recognition for decades of deep work!🎉

Registration now open for the EMBO Workshop: Immune System of Bacteria !!!! www.sisb2025.conferences-pasteur.org/home Joins us in Institut Pasteur, Paris, April 8-10th.

Pretty much everything is fucked, but here is some beautiful and exciting science from @archaeon-alex.bsky.social and colleagues. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Very Happy to finally see this story out. I remember the first time @archaeon-alex.bsky.social showed me the videos maybe 3-4y ago on a Zoom call ! Mind blown then and still mind blown today. A must read for all.