Out Now! Specialized RNA decay fine-tunes monogenic antigen expression in Trypanosoma brucei #MicroSky

(1/7) How does T. brucei achieve a 140-fold stoichiometric excess of VSG mRNA over upstream ESAGs from a single polycistronic unit? Our latest research in @natmicrobiol.nature.com reveals a mechanism of spatially regulated RNA decay to fine-tune expression of virulence genes

Excited to share our new preprint exploring how Paramecium achieves diverse flow functions, i.e. feeding and swimming, simultaneously. This work was spearheaded by our ExM expert, PhD student Daphne Laan @daphnelaan.bsky.social : www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New PNAS study identifies ESBX, a protein controlling which surface coat gene is active in sleeping sickness parasites - key to immune evasion. @tiengwe-tryplab.bsky.social @zephyris-science.bsky.social @fariatrypslab.bsky.social www.imperial.ac.uk/news/article...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Please check out the first Preprint from the Sangaré Lab.

Grant writing is academia's least liked activity; most applications fail and time feels wasted. LLMs are therefore a huge draw, but if this means the number of applications increases 10-fold...

An ER-Inner Membrane Complex Bridge via VAP-VPS13A-DAT1 Drives Daughter Budding in Toxoplasma gondii https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.02.697355v1

Incredibly proud to share that our work on Cryptosporidium Oocyst Wall Proteins is published in @PLOSPathogens journals.plos.org/plospathogen... Led by previous PhD student @BacchettiRoss and carried on by current PhD student, Sarah Stevens.

Congratulations to Fred Ramsdell, Mary Brunkow and Shimon Sakaguchi - the 2025 Winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. #Treg_cells #Foxp3 #Immune_regulation

⚠️ Half of commercial antibodies miss their target! So how do you pick the right one for your experiment? Here’s the solution 👉 Antibody characterization data (all tested in KO cells) are now available at: 🔗 onlygoodantibodies.co.uk Tested by @ycharos.bsky.social & @oga-community.bsky.social

Our user comments campaign may be over, but your user comments are welcome and valuable EVERYDAY! Crowdsourced user knowledge fuels discovery and helps keep gene data accurate, accessible, and impactful. Visit any gene page on @veupathdb.org or component sites to add a comment!

I was interviewed by Josh Learn for DISCOVER magazine to discuss the fascinating (and surprisingly common) parasite Toxoplasma gondii This Cat Parasite Can Infect Humans, and You Can Get It From Litter Boxes or Unwashed Veggies www.discovermagazine.com/this-cat-par...

Anyone?

Honoured & grateful to have received an MPM Travel Grant and have the opportunity to present my PhD research at my first MPM 🇺🇸 Amazing science, inspiring discussions & a fantastic community of parasitologists – what a milestone in my journey. @parasitesrule.org #MPM2025 #Parasitology

[We are Hiring!] The Weiss Lab at Albert Einstein College of Medicine (NY) is hiring a Postdoc Scientist to explore the Toxoplasma gondii cyst wall using XL-MS, Split TurboID, & U-ExM. This project aims to unlock new strategies for treating toxoplasmosis. DM for more info!

We are hiring. Please RT 🙏

[We are Hiring!] The Weiss Lab at Albert Einstein College of Medicine (NY) is hiring a Postdoc Scientist to explore the Toxoplasma gondii cyst wall using XL-MS, Split TurboID, & U-ExM. This project aims to unlock new strategies for treating toxoplasmosis. DM for more info!

🧬 Scientists led by Prof. Petr Volf at the Department of Parasitology discovered key proteins behind Leishmania transmission, a step toward reducing this disease affecting hundreds of thousands globally 🌍💡 More here: 1url.cz/3Jjac

Join me on 16 Sept 8-9 AM (Boston time Zone i.e. 3 PM KSA) as I present my R package on how to access VEuPathDB component databases and several other database virtually in MPM XXXVI conference. rohit-satyam.github.io/plasmoRUtils... #plasmodium #pathogen @veupathdb.org @parasitesrule.org

The @veupathdb.org team is excited to be attending the MPM conference this week! 💬 Stop by our booth to chat with us ⌨️ Participate in our User Comments campaign- share your knowledge on gene pages and pick up your free "Got Parasites?" mug at the booth: veupathdb.org/veupathdb/ap...

New online! New Cryptosporidium parvum fitness factor

Favorite time of the year!

Our latest publication in mBio! We used the DSBSO crosslinker to map a Toxoplasma gondii interactome. By leveraging previously known biological features, we trained a machine learning model to filter out mediocre hits and strengthen the quality of the interactome. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Toxoplasma facing career options: 🏃 Tachyzoite (fast life) 😴 Bradyzoite (chronic sleeper) 🙀 Pre-sexual (cat-ready) Spoiler: epigenetics makes the call. Our recent review in Current Opinion in Microbiology decodes how chromatin remodelers, TFs& AP2s orchestrate these fates 👇🏽 doi.org/10.1016/j.mi...

It's getting more and more dystopian here. And no one is talking about this.

ICE is no longer immigration enforcement. It’s a sprawling secret police with a budget bigger than some nations’ armies. No oversight. Questionable training. Just masks, unmarked vans, and executive authority. If you think this stops at the border, you’re not paying attention.

Very useful 😀

So, I emailed the link: www.standupforscience.net/bethesda-dec... to my kids, some of my former graduate students and post-docs, and a few other friends. All in all, I shared the link with about 30 people. I asked them to consider signing and to share the link with their own networks. 5/n

Daniel's paper is now published in @jcellsci.bsky.social, great experience with @reviewcommons.org 😀 Want to know everything tubulin assembly in trypanosome flagella and other microtubules? Here is the link: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

The anticipation is over, the MPM registration and abstract submission is open!!

“I would like to cure brain cancer. I think that's not particularly controversial.” Be that as it may, the NIH terminated that scientist's grant. Here's a huge survey of the 2,500 grants that NIH has killed or delayed...so far. Gift link: nyti.ms/43Jz1yJ

GIMM PhD Programme now open. 17 PhD positions and a few more to come. gimm.pt/course/phd-p...

Definitely looks like the Resistance is rising across the US for the #NoKings action--there are events scheduled in EVERY Congressional District in the US. Check out the Map here:

Today, we're highlighting a section of the gene page in @veupathdb.org data platforms that allows you to use RNA seq evidence to 🔎🧬examine gene models- making it easy to spot splice variants or incorrect annotation. Take a look! www.youtube.com/shorts/T0Jis...

Lab cleaning. It says "What is in here? Does anybody know?" Not sure if I want to open.

🎉 Join Us for Parasite Day with PiP 2025! 🦠 We are thrilled to announce Parasite Day with PEERs in Parasitology (PiP), on June 27, 2025, from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm EDT! This virtual symposium will spotlight groundbreaking work in parasitology by scientists from historically excluded backgrounds.

CORRECTION?!: Elsevier found it totally reasonable to allow the authors to issue a swift correction for this rather messy figure. Given the extend of overlap, I am struggling to see how any of this could have happened on accident. #ResearchIntegrity? 🤡 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A meme-worthy figure. Find the panel that DOESN'T overlap with another. He et al. 2025 in the International Journal of Biological Macromolecules (DOI: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2025.140311). I am sure the authors will confirm that none of this compromises any of the results ofc. pubpeer.com/publications...

Mapping a Toxoplasma gondii interactome by crosslinking mass spectrometry and machine learning https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.28.651050v1

Thrilled to share my first paper, now out in @natmicrobiol.nature.com! Huge thanks to my amazing supervisor @hakimi.bsky.social and everyone who contributed to this work! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Metabolic adaptability/nutrient scavenging in T gondii: insights from ingestion pathway-deficient mutants Msphere journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... @verncarruthers.bsky.social This work advances our understanding of the metabolic adaptability of Toxoplasma.

In the silence of chromatin, Toxoplasma whispers change. TgSNF2h sculpts the genome - MORC in the backseat. Some genes wake. Others sleep. A dance of nucleosomes shaping space for life parasite stages to unfold. Now in Nature Microbiology: rdcu.be/ehkWp

Toxoplasma evolved two ISWI proteins: TgSNF2h and TgSNF2L. Despite looking similar structurally, these two have very different roles. TgSNF2h forms an ISWI complex with the transcription factor AP2VIII-2 and the scaffold protein TgRFTS. Spoiler: TgSNF2L will step soon into the spotlight.

🚨 Out now! Toxoplasma gondii ISWI remodeller TgSNF2h forms a complex that insulates active genes, regulates MORC-driven sexual commitment and ensures precise gene expression, safeguarding the parasite’s developmental program. #MicroSky 🦠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

As we try to understand how climate change impacts malaria @isaacstopard.bsky.social looked how daily temperature fluctuations impact development in mosquitoes. Quite a bit it seems, but still unclear in wild mosies. Lovely data from Antoine Sanou but we need more! www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Excited to share our publication @lsajournal.org showing that divergent Plasmodium kinases drive MTOC, kinetochore and axoneme organisation during male gamete formation. Many thanks, @ritatewari.bsky.social, @davidguttery.bsky.social, @zeeshanm.bsky.social, Tony and David F. doi.org/10.26508/lsa...

As Sheinerlab is joining the trend, Chat seem to have known that @macleanlab.bsky.social started his own lab recently and took the executive decision to remove him from the photo 😲😆

🏅 | @uofgsii.bsky.social's Professor Lilach Sheiner (@sheinerlab.bsky.social) was recently awarded the prestigious C.A. Wright Medal by the @bspparasitology.bsky.social for outstanding contributions to the discipline. Congratulations, Professor Sheiner! 🔗 Full story: www.gla.ac.uk/schools/infe...

It's all gone. They've taken down all the CDC datasets from data.cdc.gov Data that's critical for public health & research. Data paid for by citizens. That the government now censors. "Do not fear those who tell the truth. Fear those who try to hide it. They are willing to sacrifice other things."

Kudos to @asm.org I have never in my nearly 25yrs as a member been sent an "ASM Action Alert" asking me to contact my members of Congress. Make those calls. Write those emails. There are extraordinary times and we must make ourselves heard