I’m super happy to share that I have been awarded the University of California (UC) Dissertation-Year Fellowship. This fellowship provides extra funding and opportunities to bring my research to a successful conclusion. I am grateful to have received this award and will finish my PhD strong!

New paper where we report that Npc2 - a shuttle-like lipid transfer protein - in yeast directly transports sphingolipids to the = vacuole membrane during formation of microautophagy-linked ordered domains #lipidtime www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Behind the scenes! go.nature.com/4bYY8BM

IN BRIEF: Auxenochlorella: The green algal reference we’ve been waiting for (Regina Mencia) doi.org/10.1093/plce... #PlantScience @aspbofficial

We have been cooking up this story for a while and we are excited to finally be able to share! Read on if you're interested in whole plant regeneration WITHOUT the application of hormones!

I am thrilled to have been selected to attend the 75th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting to have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for international exchange and direct dialogue with Nobel Laureates. I am incredibly grateful to have been chosen for this prestigious honor. #LINO26 #Lindau #Nobel

Do you like it when weird organisms do silly things?? Then you're going to love this!

Algae and the Chocolate Factory. Great writeup by KAUST Discovery! discovery.kaust.edu.sa/en/article/2...

Ojeda grew up in Moriles, a small village in the south of Spain, known for its wine and olive oil.#WeAreASPB academic.oup.com/plcell/artic...

“Understanding algal biology is critically important for understanding and potentially regulating global carbon cycling.” #WeAreASPB doi.org/10.1093/plce...

Honored to be a featured first author this month!

My first paper got a cool little feature in the Department of Energy's Science Highlights! Come read about how green algae have revealed an interesting quirk in eukaryotic translation. Link below: www.energy.gov/science/ber/...

Lipid droplet on the move: remodeling, trafficking and interaction with other organelles academic.oup.com/jxb/article-... @jxbotany.bsky.social

Targeted genetic manipulation and yeast-like evolutionary genomics in the green alga Auxenochlorella (Rory J Craig, Marco A Dueñas, Dimitrios J Camacho, et al) doi.org/10.1093/plce... #PlantScience @aspbofficial

Did the first animal look like a sponge or a comb jelly? The debate continues. Check out the article from MCB's Nicole King and postdoc Jacob Steenwyk @jlsteenwyk.bsky.social: news.berkeley.edu/2025/11/19/d...

Chromosome‐level #genome assembly of the #photobiont microalga Trebouxia sp. ‘A48’ from the #lichen Xanthoria parietina 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... by Tagirdzhanova et al. @metalichen.bsky.social @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social @WileyPlantSci

My personal website is now live! Come learn a little about me and my research 🧬🦠🐠🪸🐈! marcoduenas.org

The Merchant lab's paper describing the Auxenochlorella genome and genetic toolkit is now published in The Plant Cell! I’m honored to have contributed to this project led by @rorycraig.bsky.social, Jeff Moseley, and @merchant-lab.bsky.social. Check it out below! academic.oup.com/plcell/advan...

The Merchant lab's paper describing the Auxenochlorella genome and genetic toolkit is now published in The Plant Cell! I’m honored to have contributed to this project led by @rorycraig.bsky.social, Jeff Moseley, and @merchant-lab.bsky.social. Check it out below! academic.oup.com/plcell/advan...

Excited to share my postdoc work @olzmannlab.bsky.social! We found lipid droplets, the cell’s lipid storage depots, are subject to oxidative damage and are protected by FSP1. Loss of FSP1 triggers droplet peroxidation and cell death, revealing a new layer of lipid quality control! shorturl.at/B5XYD

(6/6) Overall, we found that the “yeast-like” processes of allodiploid hybridisation, mitotic recombination, loss-of-heterozygosity and aneuploidy all occur in an alga, showing the generality of these forces to vegetatively diploid eukaryotes

(5/6) We also saw aneuploidies in two strains and we successfully transformed a trisomic chromosome using an allele-specific construct. We’re hopeful that we can utilise these redundant chromosomes for synthetic biology by sequential introduction of transgenes

(4/6) Most remarkably, our reference strain UTEX 250 is an allodiploid hybrid of two close relatives, A. protothecoides and A. symbiontica, that are distinguished by highly rearranged karyotypes. The UTEX 250 sub-genomes have been further shuffled by rearrangements and recombination

(3/6) Unlike most green algae, Auxenochlorella are vegetatively diploid and their genomes are shaped by evolutionary phenomena that reflect this. While these processes are well-understood in yeast, we were surprised to see extensive mitotic recombination and loss-of-heterozygosity in several strains

(2/6) We introduce selectable markers, inducible promoters and fluorescent reporters for protein localisation, and @marcoaduenas.bsky.social has written a protocol for HR-based transformation: dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.x54v922mql3e/v1. All credit to a team led by Jeff Moseley here

(1/6) First and foremost, Auxenochlorella spp. are oily green algae that can be readily transformed by homologous recombination, enabling efficient site-specific transformation of the nuclear genome. This is a first for chlorophytes, and we hope that it will facilitate lots of interesting research

Excited to introduce Auxenochlorella as a new algal reference organism for fundamental plant science and bioengineering. A paper in two parts: a genetic toolkit for site-specific genomic manipulation, paired with the most unusual genome I’ve ever worked on academic.oup.com/plcell/artic...

Our large-scale biology article is out in @theplantcell.bsky.social! Dig into these rich datasets to see how light-induced stress not only impacts what algae do during the day, but also how it shapes their physiology and gene expression at night. doi.org/10.1093/plce...

Check out this piece I wrote with @qb3.bsky.social’s awesome science communication team *highlighting* (pun intended) recent work in @theplantcell.bsky.social by Valle Ojeda and yours truly! 🌱🦠🔬

You can learn more about the study's lead author, Daniel Wangpraseurt (a marine biologist at Scripps Oceanography), and his research below.

This month's interview is with Marco Dueñas! Marco is a PhD candidate in Sabeeha Merchant’s lab in @berkeleymcb.bsky.social and @natureatcal.bsky.social. He chats with us about his recent paper in @pnas.org, overcoming research challenges, and more. Read the story: bit.ly/m-duenas

Thrilled to share that my first first-author paper is officially out as a PNAS direct submission! In this study, we uncovered the mechanism diving polycistronic expression in green algae! Come check it out below: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Nice analysis of bicistronic transcripts in green algae in @pnas.org, featuring our CDC26 - TTM3 pair previously identified by @lorenzoorts.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thrilled to share that my first first-author paper is officially out as a PNAS direct submission! In this study, we uncovered the mechanism diving polycistronic expression in green algae! Come check it out below: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The Auxenochlorella genome is finally out in preprint form. This green alga has great genetic tools and precise gene targeting useful for both basic biology and engineering applications. I'm excited to have contributed to this, publication coming soon! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Suggestion—call the Office of the Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions (HELP) Committee, chaired by LA Senator Bill Cassidy. Calmly explain that you are concerned further delays in NIH study section and advisory council meetings will do irreparable harm to US science/competitiveness: (202) 224-6770

Super happy to share that I was awarded a NIH F31 NRSA Predoctoral Fellowship through the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). For the rest of my PhD I will be a NIH fellow! This was a beast of a fellowship to write but am honored to be presented with this opportunity.

I was honored to be able to present my work on the polycistronic project at the Bay Area RNA club at UCSF and be selected as one of the best talks! It was so much fun and I got to see so much cool research. Keep an eye out for more updates on the polycistronic to come!