Having a hard time keeping up with the fast-moving field of origin of eukaryotes/Asgards archaea? Our new perspective article can help, we review the status of research over the last decade and where it's going. The archaeal roots of eukaryotic life www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Asgard archaea: have we found our microbial ancestors? link.springer.com/article/10.1...

10 years of massive Asgard undertaking, masterly summarized!

Just over ten years after the discovery of the first Asgard archaeal genomes, we revisit the rapid expansion of this remarkable archaeal lineage. From diverse genomes and metabolisms to eukaryotic signature proteins and the first cultured representatives. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Finally out in @natmicrobiol.nature.com: Prediction of eukaryotic cellular complexity in Asgard archaea using structural modelling. Great work by @stephkoe.bsky.social @kassipan.bsky.social @jvhooff.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Prediction of eukaryotic cellular complexity in Asgard archaea using structural modelling

Oxygen metabolism in descendants of the archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor

Our latest preprint: Together with the team of Jan Löwe, @danieltamarit.bsky.social and many others we discovered and characterized several Asgard tubulin genes and propose that microtubule architecture and dynamics evolved in Asgard archaea prior to eukaryogenesis www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our latest. Led by the very talented @ahoiching.bsky.social Cell cycle dysregulation of globally important SAR11 bacteria resulting from environmental perturbation www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs 🌊

Dominant contribution of Asgard archaea to eukaryogenesis. tldr; Best guess, ~ 50% of conserved eukaryotic protein families are from from Asgard archaea! #science #biology #evolution #nature #bioinformatics www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New Issue Alert — mLife Vol. 4, Issue 6 is out! The issue features 10 open-access papers spanning host–pathogen interactions, bacterial cell division, RNA editing, phage therapy, CRISPR optogenetics, and more. Table of contents here 👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... Highlights below ⬇️

Join the IC-DLI x mLife Webinar on Deep Life Studies! 🗓 Dec 30 | 🕐 13:00 UTC | 🧪 3 exciting talks on: • Deep-sea cold seep microbiomes • Novel methanogens beyond Euryarchaeota • Habitable rock–water systems 📍Zoom ID: 853 4219 3531 | PW: 904477

Come to follow the official BlueSky of the journal #mLife!

Insightful Review in #mLife! Emerging single-cell sequencing and imaging technologies now allow for the profiling of microbial heterogeneity with unprecedented resolution—capturing phenotypic and spatial diversity within microbial communities. 🔗 doi.org/10.1002/mlf2...

Discovery of rare #protist reveals previously unknown branch of eukaryotic tree of life phys.org/news/2025-11... Rare microbial relict sheds light on an ancient eukaryotic supergroup www.nature.com/articles/s41... #Protists #Microbes #Evolution #Eukaryotes #TreeOfLife

An archaeal genetic code with all TAG codons as pyrrolysine www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1... #jcampubs

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...

Asgards everyday! Another boost to the metabolism at the prokaryote-eukaryote interface.

I'm happy to announce the latest release of the GlobDB, available at globdb.org. The GlobDB is a database of "species dereplicated" microbial genomes, and as of release 226 contains twice the number of species-representative genomes (306,260) than the latest GTDB release.

Bacteria rely on retrons for #phage defense, but most known systems come from clinical or lab strains. @seth-shipman.bsky.social &co identify diverse #retrons from environmental #bacteria, uncovering their defense mechanisms & using them as #GenomeEditing tools @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4oDqRAF

How are we replicating our #DNA? Find origin in the #Asgard #Archaea!

chromosome replicationists – #Archaea branch, Asgard dept. – take note 👇 #ArchaeaSky thx @acritschristoph.bsky.social for boosting this 🙏

Glad to share our paper out today @NatureEcoEvo: “Serial innovations by Asgard archaea shaped the DNA replication machinery of the early eukaryotic ancestor”. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #microsky #archaeasky

Latest #CDlab paper on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social: Spatial control of karyopherin binding avidity in NPC mimics revealed by designer FG-Nucleoporins www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... With experiments & MD simulations we study de novo designed proteins for selective transport through nuclear pores

It is the year of the (more?) complex prok multicellularity :)

Wow, I feel greatly honored by being awarded the 2026 Biochemical Society Award for Significant Breakthrough or Achievement, as was just announced! www.biochemistry.org/about-us/new... It is wonderful that the Biochemical Society honors our contributions to single-molecule biophysics in this way!

Sooo cool! Congrats @archaeon-alex.bsky.social and Co.!

We are looking for tenure-track and tenured biologists to join our department: School of Life Sciences at EITech Ningbo. It's a new private university, English taught, benefits and selection are both internationally competitive. Please apply & contact me if you have any questions. shorturl.at/Rjqku