HHMI adopts Plan U journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Congrats to all authors, especially Lim who had an impressive PhD viva last week! TAC is a very interesting structure linking mitochondrial DNA and basal bodies in trypanosomes

Save the dates!! @bspparasitology.bsky.social Spring Meeting 2026 will be in Bonnie Glasgow! 7-9 April 2026, with a drinks reception in Glasgow City Chambers on the 6th of April 2026! Keep an eye on the BSP website for registration and abstract submission! Logo by @shannaraeilean.bsky.social! 🦟

A big welcome to everyone who has joined us for the @bspparasitology.bsky.social trypanosomiasis and leishmaniasis meeting this week in the beautiful city of Ceske Budějovice!

I guess I have been quite open about my ongoing diplonema project, showing PCR results, live cell imaging, IF attempts, some interesting localization. For example, my tweet about "one of two flagella" protein led to conversations with various people I had not talked to. It's been so much fun

Core funding, Orbitrap Astral, Aquilos 2, super low facility charges, etc etc

Building a synthetic cell together - nice common perspective written by many leading scientists who gathered in Shenzhen China for the inaugural ‘SynCell Global Summit’. Check it out in Nature Comm: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hotel ISG, EMBL

In Tokyo last month. In Heidelberg this week. Let's see what kind of images we can get

Want to acquire #ExM images like this and help us understand the true extent of cytoskeletal diversity across the tree of life? This position might be for you! embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j... With @dudinlab.bsky.social @embl.org @biology-unige.bsky.social @moorefound.bsky.social

My attempt to become a professor was unsuccessful again but the diplonema tagging paper is now published in Open Biology. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

The discovery of CENP-A, the centromere-specific histone H3 variant turns 40 years! Grant Rowley wrote a wonderful historical piece on the cell cycle control of this fascinating piece of chromatin! Check it out. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

📣 Open postdoc position in my lab to investigate how Toxoplasma acquires nutrients. Join me at the University of Edinburgh. Closing date 14th August. More details below ⬇️ elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

New preprint! We solve a mystery you didn't know existed. Mitotic cells lack new transcription but require ongoing translation. Interphase mRNA half life is only 2-4 hrs. So how do cells arrest in mitosis for hours without depleting their transcriptomes? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Subcellular proteomics of Paradiplonema papillatum reveals digestive capacity of the cell membrane and the plasticity of peroxisomes across euglenozoans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.16.665091v1

The problem is that the more I understand, the less it makes sense. Something is not right

After 5 amazing years @pilhoferlab.bsky.social I'm starting my lab @embl.org Grenoble this November embl.org/wollweber We'll image Asgard archaea and many other strange microbes ( #archaeasky, #protistsonsky..) to understand eukaryogenesis First job ad: #teamtomo scientist!🔬❄️ tinyurl.com/2rdu2ze6

Postdoc positions open in my lab (Francis Crick Institute) to study 1. initiation of DNA replication. 2. chromatin replication/epigenetic inheritance. Great for biochemists, biophysicists and cryo-EM/cryo-tomography scientists. Deadline 3 August 2025. crick.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job...

Celebrating 25 years of curiosity, kinetochores, and cutting-edge science! Congratulations to the @suebiggins.bsky.social Lab @fredhutch.bsky.social on their 25th anniversary. Cheers to all the amazing colleagues that have made it such a wonderful place to do research over its past and present!

Happy 25th anniversary, Biggins lab! @suebiggins.bsky.social

Thanks for your feedback. Most people "never thought about that before", which is exactly why I wanted to write this paper. But yes, it is Garg and Martin who first proposed the idea. I reached the same idea independently from a different angle

In this Hypothesis article, Bungo Akiyoshi @bungoakiyoshi.bsky.social proposes that key aspects of meiosis evolved prior to mitosis in ancestral eukaryotes. journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/... bsky.app/profile/bung...

Something a bit different from the Gruber lab: More than 10 years ago, we (and others) tried to linearize the B. subtilis chromosome using a phage telomere (successfully used before in E. coli). But it did not work.

It is great to see lab members making discoveries based on their own idea, which get them more excited and become independent (so that I can spend more time on my own project)

Check out this month’s #ISOP Member Spotlight featuring Patrick Keeling! We discuss the major challenges facing science today, the importance of storytelling in protistology, and Patrick’s experience with his long-running undergraduate protistology course at UBC #ProtistsOnSky

Published now. doi.org/10.1242/jcs....

90% of you probably don’t need to read this. But maybe some of you are curious & 10% will feel seen. Or a little less alone. This isn’t about seeking sympathy. It’s about sharing something hard to say out loud; partly to heal, partly in case someone needs to hear it too. (1/3) tinyurl.com/DudinO

The tripartite attachment complex (TAC) of Trypanosoma brucei is required for mitochondrial DNA segregation. Want to know how its outer membrane part is assembled? Check out our new preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I thought it's perilla leaf (しそ)

Dynamic cell (Paradiplonema papillatum)

Non-profit journals are on the critical list. The cause: academics obsession with the Nature brand, coupled with the APC $ model. Some will argue it doesn’t matter (“all as bad as each other”). But the fact is undeniable and it’s good guys who put money back into science like COB who are losing..

Please consider applying for a post doc in our lab if you have bioinformatics and wet lab skills, and are interested in parasites! elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Wow: check it out; these fungi distribute their chromosomes across different nuclei! Normally each nucleus has a complete set of all chromosomes. Distribution of haploid chromosomes into separate nuclei in two pathogenic fungi | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Beyond a Linear Structure: The Tubular Organization of the Tripartite Attachment Complex and the Functional Role of TAC53 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.14.653994v1

If the topology of the tree changes every time a new lineage is discovered or someone else picks their favorite protein markers and runs a tree, maybe it’s time to take a step back and wait a bit. This is not against this particular paper but it’s a general grievance I have with the field right now.

My first immunofluorescence attempt for Paradiplonema papillatum

Deep origin of eukaryotes outside Heimdallarchaeia within Asgardarchaeota www.nature.com/articles/s41...

From Andreas Houben's group. Looks very interesting.

New paper out! We discovered a tiny archaeon with the smallest known archaeal genome — only 238 kbp! Candidatus Sukunaarchaeum mirabile has almost no recognizable metabolic pathways and may rely heavily on a host to survive. It also represents a novel, deep-branching lineage in the archaeal tree.

Two CENH3 paralogs in the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii have a redundantly essential function and associate with ZeppL-LINE1 elements onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... beautiful insights into the Chlamy LINE-based centromeres from the Umen and Dawe groups @corncolors.bsky.social

Congratulations to Bill Earnshaw, my colleague and lab next door, on his election as a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences www.nasonline.org

Please RT. Post-doc opportunity alert! 💥 closing 5th May.. Come join our team (thelowlab.org) at Imperial, London, working on bacterial secretion systems. The position is funded by the Wellcome Trust. For more details and to apply please see www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...

A blutorial on my latest manuscript, which will appear as a Hypothesis article in Journal of Cell Science (no embargo requested as far as I am aware). If you are interested in mitosis/meiosis/kinetochores/evolution/deep phylogeny, please read it (1/n)

Correction: it turned out that this was a mistake by the journal (I am so relieved). But it does seem like reviews are not covered by Read and Publish agreement in some journals. Lots of pitfalls

Hi, everyone! My name is Alex. I'm a microbiologist/cell biologist/biochemist, and I'm sharing some of my career biography today for #YoungScientistNetworking. 1/

Open access options are so complicated these days. One thing I learned today in a hard way is that the "Read and Publish agreement" does not apply for review-type articles... And Wellcome does not pay OA fee for hybrid journals any more even if they have transformative status

Exploring the chromatin proteome of Trypanosoma brucei repetitive elements (telomeres, centromeres, 70bp repeats, 177bp repeats) using TALEs. Another great collaboration with @allshire-lab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

New #ISEPpaper! On the possibility of yet a third #kinetochore system in the protist phylum Euglenozoa journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.... by Corinna Benz et al. #Protists #Microbes #Evolution #CellBiology

Working on under-studied organisms makes me feel stupid all the time. So many times I say "I don't know what I'm looking at"