And teaching does make a difference: Just received the news from Pedro, that @mblbop.bsky.social 2024 fellow Linda obtained a postdoctoral fellowship to continue her career @gwu1821.bsky.social. That follows from a student who admitted this noon to join my lab because he listen to one of my talks.

✨ One year on, we honor Spencer Shorte. On Jan 28, 2026, Institut Pasteur paid tribute to a visionary scientist and human leader. His legacy lives on through the PPU–Research & Technology track, uniting research & innovation as he envisioned. Inspiring future generations.

Screw it. It's weekend. My daughters new song: open.spotify.com/intl-de/trac... placed just below mighty Bruce Springsteens Streets of Minneapolis on the German Friday music stream list.

(1/2) Our work with @freddyfrischknecht.bsky.social on the chirality of malaria parasites has found its home in the January issue of @natphys.nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Moreover, we are very happy that it comes with a news and views article 👍❤️😀

Happy New Year from Heidelberg and looking forward to SingMalNet in Singapore in February, BioMalPar in sunny Heidelberg in May and other adventures.

This might well become your best summer experience

Join us (again) for another fantastic BioMalPar meeting @embl.org and also a great pre-meeting @ciid-heidelberg.bsky.social

📢 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)

Mole's Comedia III. Purgatorio. Canto I–XXIV. journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Beautiful beasts (2): Thanks Ian for allowing us to help a little to help you figuring out how B-cells help T-cells. What a spectacular cover coloured by #micronaut Martin Oeggerli.

Now recruiting several PhD students and postdocs for different projects of our excellence cluster SynthImmune: application.synthimmune.de For more info see perspective article below and synthimmune.de

“Cellular Olympics” our catalog of freeky ultra fast cellular superhero’s is freely available “Ann Rev of microbiology” www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... This is a compilation of world’s fastest single cell organisms - enjoy this buffet of rare delightful protists with mind bending speeds. 🧪

What a way to start the week. Quick morning run at Les Embiez for the #EMBO /#ParaFRAP workshop Host-Parasite Interactions, where parasites truly rule.

Beware of artifacts during low pressure fixation of mushroom samples.

Beautiful beasts: excited to see our first volume electron microscopy study on malaria parasites published: advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... revealing new insights into Plasmodium ookinete development. Thanks for great EMBL-Umea-Heidelberg collaboration.

Early expansion microscopy: youtube.com/watch?v=56Fi...

Curious about how antibodies can target Plasmodium sporozoites? Very happy to see this review out, it means a lot to me to finish my PhD research topic with a nice overview of what is known about how anti-CSP Abs neutralize the parasite in the mammalian host.

My favorite among my daughter’s new songs: peaceful warrior youtube.com/watch?v=hzmU...

Superb conference on Iron metabolism in early gametogenesis with fellow para-philosophers Bruce Boddey and Bruce Meissner. Great keynote by Bruce D. on 666 ways of regulation by Beast kinases.

Finally published: discovery of an unusual Arp2/3 complex with surprising new function in transmission of #malaria #parasites. Great work by Franzi Hentzschel, Yvonne Sokolowski + David Jewanski + fantastic collaboration with Matthias Marti: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Awesome malaria study out now in Nature Microbiology: An atypical Arp2/3 complex is required for Plasmodium DNA segregation and malaria transmission By Franziska Hentzschel, Matthias Marti, Freddy Frischknecht & colleagues! @freddyfrischknecht.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Nice cover @molmicrounihoh.bsky.social features Blastocrithidia nonstop, a trypanosomatid parasite with a non‐canonical genetic code. Associated paper by Slava Yurchenko, Julius Lukes and colleagues describes its genetic transformation: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Thanks so much to everyone for making BioMalPar XXI such a memorable and enjoyable conference. Looking forward to BioMalPar XXII on May 27-29, 2026.

Learn about the #cytoskeleton: From #evolution to #biophysics and more at EMBO Workshop "Frontiers in Cytoskeleton Research" in Pune, India, 3–7 Nov Abstract submission deadline: 20 Jun Registration deadline: 15 Jul buff.ly/b7zAyw8 #EMBOcytoskeleton #StructuralBiology #CellBiology #EMBOevents 🧪

The SynthImmune project by Heidelberg University& partner institutes advances a "bottom-up" synthetic biology approach to immunotherapies. Hoping they do well in the German government's Excellence Strategy—anticipating the announcement on 22 May. Perspective article: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Come join us for an exciting @embo.org meeting in an enchanting location near Marseille

#malaria #parasites aren't exactly tolerated by our #liver cells. Preview with Justin Boddey on a great paper by Camila Marques da Silva and Samarchith P. Kurup in the same issue: Interferoning with #Plasmodium development in the liver: www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Looking forward to teaching a @kakape.bsky.social inspired bridging seminar with Nora Heinzelmann on different aspects of modern biotechnology @marsilius.bsky.social. Looking forward to an interesting rollercoaster of opinions.

Live from Tübingen: the one and only Artur Scherf illuminating #Plasmodium var gene expression using his flower model of the infected red cell.

Congrats Dr Annika Binder for a fantastic thesis and defense on microtubule binding proteins of #malaria #parasites exactly 25 years after I got my Dr for something with #actin and poxviruses and almost failed a question on, well, microtubule binding proteins.

Finally: Plasmodium actin filaments visualized in all their glory. Congrats Josie and Vojtech: www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

And here with two previous winners both proudly wearing the traditional leopard skin that comes along with the prize. Go boldly.

A short but wonderful course on #parasites for Master and PhD students organized by the one and only Jude Przyborski. Apply.

📅 Save the Date! The EMBO Workshop "Host-Parasite Relationship: From Mechanisms to Control Strategies" organized by @ParaFrap will take place on October 5-8, 2025, at Les Embiez Island. Stay updated on registration opening —enter your email here: coming-soon.embo.org/w25-83 #Science #Parasite

Germany, verscholzt.

Last day to submit an abstract for BioMalPar 2025, don’t miss out

Happy to announce that we are running the third edition of the EMBL-UNESCO residency on infection biology. If you are an African female scientist and would like to do a research stay at EMBL, my lab is a possible hosting group. Deadline March 31st! www.embl.org/about/info/s...

Infection: pathogens, hosts, and microbiomes EMBO:EMBL meeting - great line up of speakers. Abstract deadline is less than a month away! You don't want to miss this one if you are interested in infection biology.

Gametes and sporozoites: Happy to see our paper probing the importance of #microtubule inner proteins in #Plasmodium published in final form @pnas.org - Sporozoites can do without MIPs but gametes cannot. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Review in this collection: The #Plasmodium #circumsporozoite protein #CSP, authored by Mirko Singer, Sachie Kanatani, Stefano Garcia Castillo, @freddyfrischknecht.bsky.social, and Photini Sinnis. #Malaria #Vaccine #Mosquito #Oocyst #Adhesion #GPIanchor www.cell.com/trends/paras...

I usually prefer wearing @mblscience.bsky.social BoP course T-shirts, but seeing a Hugo Boss sporozoite shirt, I could no resist. That Stefan had nearly the same left no doubt that the two projects would be funded 🙂

Join the Biology of Parasitism (BoP) course at MBL Woods Hole for an unforgetttable summer of science and fun, meet wonderful teachers and make friends for life: www.mbl.edu/education/ad...

Superb and authorative historical review by Julien Guizetti on imaging malaria parasites. From Laveran to live-cell STED in Journal of Microscopy: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Happy 2025 from Heidelberg

I always wanted to name a protein after a Greek goddess or nymph and here we go: journals.plos.org/plospathogen... Happy holidays everyone

Exciting opportunity for students from Africa: a master program on infection biology in Lambarene, Gabon and Germany: uni-tuebingen.de/en/study/fin...

Beautiful blendering of #Plasmodium sporozoites migrating in 3D. Thanks and congrats to Leon @lettermann.bsky.social for being included in this lovely calender from @dfgpublic.bsky.social. Happy to just receive renewal funding for this project within our network on Physics of Parasitism.

Our new outreach movie without words in an attempt on being creative illustrating how pathogen exit can be blocked to stop diseases. Thanks to Matthias and Yvonne and to @spp2225.bsky.social @dfgpublic.bsky.social for funding

End of year fireworks: the cover showing fully formed Plasmodium sporozoites in an oocyst by expansion microscopy accompanies our review on the functions of circumsporozoite protein; blue: anti-CSP antibody, magenta: DNA. Congrats Kevin and Maren for the beautiful image.

Amazing friday: two paper revisions submitted and a €6 million grant banana found. Time for pizza.