Excited to share our lab's new paper in Current Biology featuring MS student Sydney Schultz's work. We show that a polar alga carries large amount of giant viral DNA in its genome, and many of the viral genes respond to stress - with implications for host adaptation. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Single-cell transcriptomics reveals a new marine parasite: Characterization and distribution of Rozellomyces from the Gulf of Alaska ⛴️🔬🌊 Congrats Adarsh and all co-authors: @protistwtmostest.bsky.social, Gordon, @pjkeelinglab.bsky.social, and Naomi! #ProtistsOnSky

If you're a senior PhD student or recent graduate interested in doing work at the intersection of AI and microbial genomics and/or microbiomes, please feel free to reach out to discuss the possibility of applying together for an MIT Novo Nordisk Fellowship engineering.mit.edu/novo-nordisk

This is super cool!! This is a kind of ciliate called a suctoria (this one happens to be Acineta sp.) and it’s sucking up the contents of this egg! You can see it consuming the mush on the left hand side of the ‘martini glass’ (timelapse) #marineplankton 🦑

#ERGAReads | FANTASIA leverages language models to decode the functional dark proteome across the animal tree of life www.nature.com/articles/s42... @rosafernandez.bsky.social @commsbio.nature.com @csic.es @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social #LLM #proteome #functional #annotation #genomes

NF-κB: A Diverse and Multi-Functional Transcription Factor in Holozoans academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

Postdocs and early-career researchers, this is for YOU! Join ASM’s FREE webinar, "Building Impact, Not Just CVs: Thriving with Limited Resources." 📅 April 7 | ⏰ 10–11 a.m. ET 💻 Virtual Register here: asm.social/2QY

Tara Coral 🪸🌊 L’@ibe-barcelona.bsky.social  participa en una expedició internacional al Triangle de Coral per estudiar la resiliència dels coralls al canvi climàtic. L’equip de Javier del Campo investigarà el microbioma dels coralls. 🧬 Més aquí👉https://shorturl.at/UpUBc

The MicrobeAtlas database: Global trends and insights into Earth’s microbial ecosystems www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #microbiome

We're pulling together the genomes for GlobDB release 232, which will be based on the upcoming GTDB release. We will also add new sources of genomes not in INSDC. Here's an overview of the data that will be included in the next GlobDB: globdb.org/news Please contact me if we've missed something!🦠🖥️🧬

Now at @nature.com ! Our collab with the Sunagawa lab reveals coral reef microbiomes as a new reservoir for natural product discovery 🪸, and we functionally characterized novel RiPP chemistry and enzymology hidden within these reefs. Congrats Daniel, Dora, Alena, and Clara on this amazing work!

Nanopore sequencing reaches amplicon sequence variant (ASV) resolution www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #jcampubs

DECODE: a universal deconvolution framework for transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic data. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

So I pleased to announce the conceptual spawn of FigTree: PearTree (acronym still to be finalised). If you want to dive right in it is hosted as a web app here: artic-network.github.io/peartree (click the “Example...” button for immediate candy and then click every button you can find).

Protist lovers: Please apply for a week of rhapsody! Learn by doing: MicroSEA (Microbial Sea Eukaryotes) course is a one-week, field-based summer school to train early-career researchers in the diversity, ecology, and single-cell biology of marine protists. opbc.sciencesconf.org #protistsonsky

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐠𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐬𝐲𝐦𝐛𝐢𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧? 🪸 Join us for a 3-year #Postdoc and help us find out! Our ERC-funded project at @hifmb.de offers excellent facilities and an international collaborative work environment. Apply by April 1st: jobs.awi.de/Vacancies/21... #ScienceJobs

Great review on marine apicomplexans! Well done @ambonacolta.bsky.social et al. 🙌🏻👏🏼

Open access to article rdcu.be/e4A70

Here, we nearly double the number of Asgardarchaeota MAGs, including 136 Heimdallarchaeia (49 Hodarchaeales), along with several novel lineages. We also introduce a new class, Ranarchaeia. 4/12

💡 We are inviting you to nominate a woman in microbiology whose work or impact deserves to be seen. Selected nominations will be featured on the FEMS website and across our social media channels on International Women’s Day, 8 March. 👉 Who inspires you? Nominate them by 4 March . buff.ly/AKyMbQD

In this review we map the journey to animal multicellularity and define three extinct ancestral stages: 🔹 LUAA: Last Unicellular Animal Ancestor. 🔹 FACA: First Animal Common Ancestor. 🔹 LACA: Last Animal Common Ancestor. Check it out: bit.ly/4azuLVY @embojournal.org

Active virus-host system in a Lokiarchaeon culture https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.13.705702v1

Temporal rhythms govern coral-symbiont relationship Changes in gene expression & microbiome of reef-building coral & algal symbionts through diel cycles. Dawn is time for host molecular activation; microbes shift metabolic contributions between day/night www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

How a coral holobiont stays in sync in nature Preview of work revealing that a coral, its algal symbiont & associated microbes coordinate gene activity across day-night cycles, establishing a baseline of how coral holobionts behave in the wild www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Cool perspective piece by @chancx.bsky.social on our recent pub in Cell Host & Microbe. Read it here 👉 tinyurl.com/33uxf3ts

Applications are now open for our EMBO Practical Course in Computational and Experimental Microbiomics! 🧫🔬🖥️ meetings.embo.org/event/26-mic... Come learn a mix of computational and experimental microbiome techniques from 6-8th July in beautiful Bath, UK! Registration Deadline: 11 May 2026

New study by Rossin et al. visualizing SCTLD progression in multiple coral species 🪸 “The lysing of gastrodermal cells leads to separation of the gastrodermis from the mesoglea, and finally to liquifying necrosis.” Check it out here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Heat-stressed #corals and the important role of picoplankton-derived nitrogen link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Nice to see this published! TBT when I was focused almost exclusively on viral discovery: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The Microbiome Within a Microbe: Rethinking Blastocystis Biology onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #protists #microbiome

@michaeltconnelly.bsky.social et al. sequenced 342 Pocillopora coral samples from the Eastern Tropical Pacific, revealing four distinct species; algal symbiont community profiling identified dominant symbionts that varied according to host species. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf235 #genome #evolution

Last postdoc pub finally out!! This one was a doozy, but really enjoyable to work on. Involved some creative problem solving in regards to analysis of transcriptomic data from complex experimental designs. In the end I learned A LOT from this team and think the final product is pretty cool.

#ProtistsOnSky no 'swimming' by 𝘝𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘺𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢, definitively no 'staying still'. just a relaxed walk towards the lunch...

Temporal rhythms govern coral-symbiont relationship Changes in gene expression & microbiome of reef-building coral & algal symbionts through diel cycles. Dawn is time for host molecular activation, while microbes shift metabolic contributions between day/night www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Els coralls dormen com nosaltres, però la seva simbiosi no descansa 🪸 📕 Un equip de recerca de l’ @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social ha descobert que els coralls descansen a la nit tot i no tenir sistema nerviós, mentre que els seus microorganismes continuen actius. 💤  👉https://shorturl.at/wC0eU

Cool web story on our diel coral research! Check it out here: shorturl.at/qx9K6

✅ For the first time, it has been observed in situ that "sleep" helps maintain the host-microbe balance in very primitive organisms, a mechanism that could be extremely ancient in animal evolution.

🌙 When the sun sets, corals recover from the stress accumulated during the day, caused by the intense activity of their symbiotic microorganisms. 💤 #DiscoveringLife #ConservingBiodiversity 👉https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2026.01.004

Corals sleep like us, but their symbiosis does not rest🪸 📕 A research team from the @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social has discovered that corals rest at night despite not having a nervous system, while their microbes remain active.🧵 #UnravellingEvolution 👉https://shorturl.at/qx9K6

🚨New Pub Alert🚨 We present a system-level molecular framework of natural diel regulation in the stony coral P. strigosa, integrating host & symbiodiniaceae transcriptomics with microbiome dynamics over 6hr intervals. Amazing to publish this PhD work @miamirosenstiel.bsky.social 👉 shorturl.at/TzYEr

Happy to have contributed to the #protists section of this @ergabiodiv.bsky.social whitepaper 👉 From Permits to Samples: Addressing Key Challenges for High-Quality Reference Genome Generation in Europe onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

OCEAN LEADERS FELLOWSHIP: Applications now open (Sustainable Oceans Alliance) Learn more here: www.soalliance.org/ocean-leader... #coralreefs #fellowships #financialsupport #marineconservation #ocean #funding #marineecology #marinebiology #oceanleaders #sustainability

A lot of great discussion at @univmiami.bsky.social IDSC Day 2026 about advances in AI & Machine Learning- including critical ethics issues. Presented our newest work adapting protein language models (PLMs) in corals to enhance functional annotations. Thanks for hosting such an awesome event IDSC!

Emergency sampling in the USVI as part of our NSF Diadema project. Didn’t even know I was coming down here yesterday at breakfast; today flew down, and was in the water within 45 mins of arrival. Unfortunately, it’s happening at our site (but this is good for our study). Urchins are dying…

Out now in Environmental Microbiome! 🧬 By re-analyzing microbialite sequencing data, we show that chromerid algae (the closest photosynthetic relatives of apicomplexans) are consistent and widespread associates of microbialites across diverse marine and freshwater environments worldwide 🌎

Emergency for Caribbean collaborators: There appears to be Diadema mortality somewhat reminiscent of the 2022 die off occurring right now in the USVI. If anyone hears of wider occurrences in the region please let us know! Please re-post!

Host-independent persistence of the Diadema antillarum Scuticociliatosis Philaster clade in coastal environments https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.07.698123v1

1/ I wasted hours debugging an RNA-seq pipeline. The next day, I rebuilt it in 45 minutes using Claude Code.

Western University is looking for a Canada Research Chair (CRC) Tier 1 in Metabolomics. We are intent on building capacity in this system and the ideal candidate will help build infrastructure and mentor junior faculty. Please see the job ad at: uwo.ca/facultyrelat...