Check out Javi’s discovery of a membrane scission mechanism that is a few billion years old!

New preprint from the lab!!🎉 We show that Asgard archaea ESCRT-III proteins can trigger membrane fission and reveal its molecular mechanism, offering clues to how these cells may have built internal compartments. But do these organisms even have these compartments? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Delighted to share our latest work on the deep divergence of land plants! @jandevries.bsky.social #Phylogenomics #Embryophytes #Terrestrialization www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Africa’s forests have joined the Brazilian Amazon and Australian forests in becoming carbon sources rather than sinks. Around 2010 the previous storage of our carbon emissions flipped, mainly through deforestation and degradation. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #climatechange #deforestation #Africa

How does messenger RNA (mRNA) get out of the nucleus to become a protein? Eukaryotic mRNA is packaged, exported, and then translated in the cytoplasm. But how do these steps work? And what are open questions? Check out our new review for our take: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... (1/3)

2/2 If you’re into #cellbio, cellular interfaces, #mechanobiology, #membranes, anything related, come to Münster, Germany, May 27–29! www.uni-muenster.de/SFB1348/en/i... Please spread the word. It’s a fantastic (and FREE!) meeting. And while you’re here, explore Münster… it’s worth it. #Science

📣 Applications for the #EIPOD-Linc Postdoctoral Fellowships Programme are open! Join us to work on self-designed interdisciplinary research on projects related to exploring life in context. ✍ Apply now: www.embl.org/about/info/p...

New paper from the @rouxlab.bsky.social on Nature Communications! We study how membrane tension is spatially organized in cells. Using the mechanosensitive probe Flipper-TR to visualize tension across the plasma membrane of adherent cells and to dissect the conditions needed for a gradient to happen

So proud to watch Jana turn a side quest into an entire research programme. Couldn’t imagine a more well-deserved outcome. 😍 The mighty yeast reveals what we believe are general principles of centromere evolution! Behind the curtain: communities.springernature.com/posts/counti... #MEvoSky 🧪🌎

So excited for @helsenjana.bsky.social’s centromere work to be published! There’s a lot of new data since the biorxiv preprint - check out Jana’s thread!

Curious about how this story came to be (we never planned to study centromeres!)? Here’s a glimpse behind the scenes of how a naive method to count chromosomes unlocked the rules behind centromere evolution. P.S. There are cartoons! 👉 tinyurl.com/4rz4ve6u

Huge thanks to everyone involved: @gautamdey.bsky.social and @gsherloc.bsky.social for their unwavering support and @kausthubh.bsky.social for helping me see the forest for the trees. Final thanks: @embl.org and Stanford University for hosting the work, and the Life Science Alliance for funding me.

PCAn, our point centromere annotation tool 🔍 was also updated! Try it out with your own genome assemblies and let us know what you think! 👉 github.com/JHelsen/point-centromere-detection

Read the bioRxiv version last Jan? There's a ton of NEW cool stuff! Discover: new centromeres (1B years from budding yeast!), in vivo experiments showing how kinetochore protein evolution impacts new centromere success, and more! 👉 bsky.app/profile/helsenjana.bsky.social/post/3lfwobnnaak2o

How do new centromeres evolve while staying compatible with the division machinery? Discover it in our new Nature paper! We show centromeres transition gradually via a mix of drift, selection, and sex, reaching new states that still work with the kinetochore. 👉 doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09779-1

(2/3) Centromeres – the little points where two arms of a chromosome meet – are one of the fastest-evolving parts of our genome. Scientists studied centromeres in two fungal groups that diverged over a billion years ago to understand the evolutionary pressures that act on them.

(3/3) The researchers found that the cell’s division machinery acts as a critical filter, allowing only those centromere variants that are compatible with effective attachment to survive and spread. @gautamdey.bsky.social @helsenjana.bsky.social @gsherloc.bsky.social @kausthubh.bsky.social

(1/3) Imagine reconstructing a history over a billion years in the making. New research from EMBL and @Stanford shows how centromeres retain their function despite their rapid rate of change, and the evolutionary constraints that govern this process. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Just uploaded our new preprint to @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social Multinucleate life really is everywhere...from deep sea forams to slime molds, intracellular parasites, and beyond. 🚀 We explore how scaling, ecology, & evolution intersect when many nuclei share a single cytoplasm. doi.org/10.32942/X2M...

Our attempt to give multinucleate cells the spotlight they deserve (seriously, they’re everywhere), led by the fearless @mrosjac.bsky.social and with @Markus Ganter doi.org/10.32942/X2M... We’d love your feedback while this goes through the peer review process! #MicroEvoSky #ProtistsonSky 🧪🌏

And now we have Arabidopsis plants with 8 chromosomes instead of 10 and no obvious phenotypic differences, this week in @science.org #PlantScience Paper here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Perspective here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

So happy to announce our new preprint, “A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes.” We cultured a novel amoeba from Lassen Volcanic NP (CA, USA) that divides at 63°C (145°F) 🔥 - a new record for euk growth! #protistsonsky 🧵

Check out that spindle 🤩🔥 At 63C, most eukaryotic cells would be busy exploding noisily, forget even trying to divide. The microbial universe never ceases to astound 😍 Thanks for letting us be a tiny part of this! #ExpandThemAll

📢 Paper alert 📢 Chirality is known to be important for the movement of microorganisms and active matter. In our new paper out today in @natphys.nature.com, we show that chirality is used by malaria parasites to control their motion patterns: doi.org/10.1038/s415... Here comes a 🧵 ... (1/9)

We (Nordborg & Weigel labs) need input on the next generation of genome browsers & data download modes for the #Arabidopsis #1001GenomesPlus project. We have now a curated collection of over 500 long read genomes. Please help us by filling out this questionnaire: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

🎉 There are currently 4 opportunities to join the Holt lab in beautiful Bath! 🎉 If you're interested in protists, parasites, and/or biodiversity then please check out our website: theholtlab.com/posts/ln5-21... 🚨 Deadlines vary between project. ✉️ Please reach out if you have any questions!

We will be at @ccapoban.bsky.social in stunning Oban for the next two weeks fixing samples from their remarkable collection for #ExAME - thank you Ceci Mikey Jo Naomi and everyone at SAMS for the warm Scottish welcome ❤️ #ProtistsonSky #ExpandThemAll @fmikus.bsky.social

Researching this week's column, I stumbled across something that amazed me: the near-absence of reliable data about climate impacts over most of the world. Due to the rich world's failure to fund research. We don't know because our governments don't care. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Each such discovery is a game changer for our understanding of eukaryote evolution, and this paper is no exception. Meet Solarion, which displays yet again novel types of subcellular structures. Congrats to all authors on a fascinating story. #protistsonsky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Thank you, Daniela, @danielabarilla.bsky.social, for a wonderful commentary! 🤗🤗 More spotlight on the Asgards and their chromatin! ❤️ #archaea #chromatin

Junior professor position at the University of Kaiserslautern! Our Department of Biology is seeking a colleague working with microalgae. This is a wonderful place to do wonderful science with great people! Please, repost :) Further details: jobs.rptu.de/jobposting/1...

To probe gene-scale chromatin physics, we built 96-mer (20 kb) arrays with defined histone marks. Combining single-molecule tracking, AFM imaging, and developing in vitro Hi-C, we saw how specific modifications dictate chromatin structure and dynamics. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Our work on Naegleria Myosin 2 is out! Naegleria encodes 3 Myo2s which contract its actin network—the first evidence of contractile Myo2 outside of Amorphea. Myo2 is actually widespread in Naegleria's relatives and correlates with fast cell crawling. Read more: www.cell.com/current-biol...

My latest for @science.org: A remarkable set of high-resolution climate model runs, computed over 900 (!) days of supercomputing time, are revealing how warming-induced changes to Earth's wind patterns due can prime huge spikes in extreme rainfall. But the MESACLIP runs also do much more than that.

New preprint 🥳! We made photoclickable HaloTag ligands to precisely control protein labeling on living cells. With it, we can do some cool multicolor stuff. Huge congrats to Franzi and all co-authors! Check it out 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Assembly, architecture and functional roles of microbial surface layers Review article published in @natrevmicro.nature.com with @bupbuse.bsky.social, Andriko von Kügelgen and @vikramalva.bsky.social. S-layers are everywhere! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Just gonna put this here for now www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... bsky.app/profile/jlst...

Wound healing is a hallmark feature of all life, including single cells. In a new preprint, Ambika Nadkarni @biochembika.bsky.social investigates a new dimension in cellular wound healing: how cells recover AFTER the wound has been closed www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Launching celldynamicslab.com, the homepage of our new group at EPFL working on cell fragmentation, membrane and cortex mechanics, FLIM imaging, and microfluidics tools. MSc/PhD or postdocs interested in quantitative cell biology are welcome to reach out. We're also hiring a lab manager in 2026!

🌍Open call: Junior Group Leader positions! Join a world-class biomedical research institute at the heart of the Vienna BioCenter, where curiosity drives discovery. Lead your own lab, pursue bold ideas, and shape the future of science at the IMP: www.imp.ac.at/career/open-...

🚀 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

www.nature.com/articles/s42... Latest from the lab. The conclusion is in the title! Basically, we found that the KMN complex (outer kinetochore) is fully conserved between plants and fungi/animals, showing deep origin. (reminder, you are closer to a mushroom than a mushroom is to a plant.)

From an accidental discovery of hidden biology to a new framework to understanding and diagnosing rare disease. Thrilled to share the most recent work from our lab and the amazing Jimmy Ly. wi.mit.edu/news/alterna...

This is a glimpse of the cytoskeletal structures we found doing U-ExM in more than 200 species, now in Cell🤩: shorturl.at/6oHvi Amazing collaboration between @centriolelab.bsky.social , @dudinlab.bsky.social and @gautamdey.bsky.social labs. I believe last one is a 🕷️ #FluorescenceFriday #Microscopy

Just read this great quote from one of my scientific heroes: Franklin Harold: ‘The way of science is for the best of our achievements to endure in substance but lose their individuality, like raindrops falling into a pond.’

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.

And just when you thought things were settling down, the enigmatic Asgard archaea have another surprise in store! Cell cycle/life cycle stage-specific internal compartments with almost no eukaryote-derived clues as to how they might function. Beautiful tomography and microscopy - congrats all 🤩

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...