I am doing a short workshop in this symposium (quoted below) for folks in and around Leipzig. Here's the abstract. I really indulged myself with this one. A Guerilla Approach to Scientific Workflow:

Looking for something new to integrate into an #evolution or #microbiology course? Useful for lectures, labs, homework? Have a look at our STEPS program, which simulates bacterial evolution, including the #LTEE. Easy web-based interface & lab manual w/ exercises to help develop students' intuition.

We're excited to release metaTraits.embl.de! 🦠 Interactively explore 140+ 𝗺𝗶𝗰𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗻𝗼𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗶𝗰 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘁𝘀, harmonized & integrated from culture-derived collections 🔬 & genome-based predictions 🧬 for >2M MAGs & genomes. Publication at NAR: doi.org/10.1093/nar/... @narjournal.bsky.social #microsky 🧵 1/8

I woke up to some very sad news... Peer was a giant of bioinformatics and computational biology and an inspiring mentor to everyone who had been in his group. I find myself repeating things he said all the time and will probably keep doing so for the rest of my life www.embl.org/news/embl-an...

With the release of anvi'o v9, the 300k+ contigs databases available for download on the GlobDB website are now compatible with both the development version and the latest stable release (v9) of anvi'o. More info: globdb.org/news Thanks #anvio team! 🖥️🧬🦠

amazing work!

Excited to see this published! A big part of why SAR11 is so tricky to grow like "normal" microbes.

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

I just finished a three-year term as an editor at an international relations journal. I began at the start of the LLM era but ended right in the middle of it. Our volume of submissions tripled and our desk reject rate rose to 75%. I have some thoughts. open.substack.com/pub/hegemon/...

damnnnnnn

It's that time of year again! I'm looking for suggestions of 'emerging' model organisms for my #CellBio course's final proj: Organism nomination form here (links to blog on proj info): forms.office.com/r/v8zYgqVe8W #cellbiology #biology #academicsky #microsky #archaeasky #protistsonsky 🧪 (1/n)

Cleaning up the desktop on my laptop and found this #ggplot2 #rstats

Thought I would share an SEM image of a Meringosphaera I picked at Klubban (West Coast of Sweden) for my first post on Bluesky :) #protistsonsky

New preprint out! Using ~75k environmental OTUs + 77 fossil calibrations, we reconstructed a Proterozoic timeline of eukaryote evolution. Our results show crown eukaryotes were already diversifying >1.6 Ga, long before the first undisputed fossils (~1.05 Ga). 🔗 DOI: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New paper up - inspired by the periodic table of the elements, we attempted to organize bacterial diversity in genome-inferred trait space academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

🖥🧬🦠

🚀 New in @natmicrobiol.nature.com EMCG — droplet-based single-particle genomics method 🧬⚠️Sequencing marine microbes one by one — in nL of seawater! Ultra-high resolution — no culture, no bulk averaging. A new way to see the invisible 🫥 🌊 rdcu.be/eOsUF #protistsonsky @bigelowlab.bsky.social

A Novel Protistan Trait Database Reveals Functional Redundancy and Complementarity in Terrestrial Protists(Amoebozoa and Rhizaria) #protists #eukaryotes #amoeba onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Our new paper on what heterotrophic nanoflagellates do in nature doi.org/10.1111/1462... or www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/.... Data available at doi.org/10.5281/zeno.... Funded by @ncn.gov.pl #ProtistsOnSky

I had the honor of designing a field guide that spotlights 222 species of pollinators in Portugal. These creatures play a vital role in our ecosystems, supporting over 75% of agricultural crops. Yet, their populations are declining, a reality that makes this guide more urgent than ever.

Applications for MCSA are up 64%! 50% now come from outside the EU. Trump effect? The European Research market just got a hell of a lot more crowded. EU should turn on the tap marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/news/msca-po...

a huge effort and a huge service!

Great to see this finally published! Metalog: curated and harmonised contextual data for global metagenomics samples now out in @narjournal.bsky.social academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

Perfect bird design 10/10 peak A+ no notes #birds 🗺️

Maybe my favorite Food Map, ever.

Just learned you can convert JPG to PNG in R with {magick}. Did you know this? #rstats

This was such a neat study it got posted twice on our 'cool papers' channel in lab slack 😅 #ProtistsonSky

First neurons didn’t appear overnight. We trace their roots to ancient secretory cells - showing how lifestyle & behavior shaped the evolution of first synapses.🧠🌊 #Evolution #Neuroscience Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E @jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social

Read the annual report from @elife.bsky.social: elifesciences.org/inside-elife... I welcome that eLife is no longer indexed by SCIE. And I admire that they have not backed away from their innovative model, which makes me even more motivated to send our best work to eLife.

«A global coral phylogeny reveals resilience and vulnerability through deep time» This looks great. Figure 2 is textbook material! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Please share this with anyone who may be interested in a post-doc in Germany: jobs.awi.de/Vacancies/20... This is quite an exciting opportunity to push the boundaries of what is known regarding the molecular basis of the formation and demise of photosymbiotic relationships in marine habitats.

Sprache der Dichter und Denker (languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=71740)

I'm delighted our paper is out: doi.org/10.1093/isme... With new SAR11 isolate genomes and time-series metagenomes, we reveal coastal and offshore SAR11 ecotypes, identify associated metabolic traits, and pinpoint selective gene sweeps as a likely evolutionary driver to niche partitioning. 🌊🦠

LLMs can be useful for some things, but simulating human research participant responses isn’t one of them

#microsky #mevosky @spp2389.bsky.social A PhD position is available in my lab to work on: Emergence and self-organisation of bacterial metabolism in consortia of cross-feeding bacteria. Please RT Deadline: 12.11.25 More infos 👇 shorturl.at/rAKAT

Lol the Nobels can't even acknowledge women's contribution to discovery. But sure let's acknowledge The Machines.

They are architects of the sea, engineers of the air—capturing carbon, atom by atom. While you breathe, they build. While you sleep, they safeguard our climate. #InvisibleHeroes #OceanGuardians #ClimateWarriors #protistsonsky Illustrations by Rosie Sheward

Victor Hensen coined the term "Plankton" in 1887. By 1910 it was an industry (still is)! Steuer's book ran 722 pages!

Curious, if someone wanted to annotate a large set of MAGs with KEGG, PFAM, CAZY, and then do some statistical comparison, how would you do that these days? Back in the day I loved EnrichM, but the backend databases for KEGG, etc, are woefully out of date now.

I am extremely happy to share our latest manuscript "Widely-distributed freshwater microorganisms with streamlined genomes co-occur in cohorts with high abundance". This project started back in 2021-2022 and after a long time, it sees the light today! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Dear community, Bakta needs your help! To further improve the functional annotation of "hypothetical" CDS, me and @gbouras13.bsky.social, we are looking for the worst Bakta-annotated bacterial genomes ;-) (1/2)

"Put simply, this is bad science. Research that can’t be verified can’t be trusted. Research that can’t be built upon can’t advance knowledge." This is great! pracheeac.substack.com/p/scholarly-...

⚠️New paper ➡️ isolating >600 freshwater microbes using dilution-to-extinction and low-nutrient, lake-mimicking media. 🤯Expands cultured diversity to ~70 % of detected genera and enables physiological studies of streamlined oligotrophs. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #protistsonsky

I've seen this several times: when Acantharians get big enough they like to eat tintinnids. And they always orient with the lorica opening pointed in: like they are slurping up a little jello shot. That glass house can't protect you from these weird predators little ciliate! 🦑 #protistsonsky

The radiolarian hipster says to the diatoms "I was a spiky glass cell before it was cool" (first radiolarians appeared ~500 million years ago; first diatoms ~200 million years ago). But the diatoms grow *much* faster. No one even knows how radiolarians grow at all! They don't seem to eat diatoms 😅

This moment from our latest episode with science writer @edyong209.bsky.social is 🔥 We asked Ed — how do we talk up the benefits of science in the face of government cuts? He told us that's the wrong approach. 🧪 Listen wherever, or watch on Spotify 👇 open.spotify.com/episode/7Evh...

Another record month for bioRxiv - and further evidence the pandemic spike+dip was just that and growth continues. Thanks to all involved and that includes 🫵

Classic macroecological laws-long held as signatures of biological systems-also emerge in economic and geological systems. The real signal lies not in the static universal patterns, but in how those patterns shift with scale 🌐🧪 #scaling #macroecology journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Our latest #preprint led by Yumary M. Vasquez & Frederik Schulz @jgi.doe.gov The largest database of giant #virus MAGs (GVMAGs V2) with >18,000 genomes from #marine, freshwater, anthropogenic and terrestrial environments. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🌊 Happy to share our recent study on phytoplankton dynamics! We found that communities can shift dramatically in just a few days - driven by grazers like Cladocera and environmental factors such as silica concentration and wind speed. t.co/PaL0QcofrV