And vice versa, sulfur-oxidizing bacteria are masters of colonizing marine hosts! This was a wonderful collaboration with Sam Vohsen, Eslam Osman, Mandy Joye, Matt Saxton, grubervodicka.bsky.social, @ibaums.bsky.social

We are looking for a PhD student to work on an exciting plastid endosymbiosis in microbial eukaryotes. This position involves sampling, exciting microscopy such as CARDFISH, ExM and FIBSEM, single-cell transcriptomics and more. #protistsonsky 1/2

Job Opening **ASSISTANT PROFESSOR MARINE ECOLOGY**, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Rhode Island. jobs.uri.edu/postings/15960

This past Thursday I successfully defended my dissertation! Thank you @symbiosisrox.bsky.social and the rest of the lab for making it a super fun celebration! I dressed up my son as a #ciliate for the occasion and we jumped into Narragansett Bay at @urigso.bsky.social beach afterwards #ProtistsOnSky

This is a long shot but does anyone know how to pronounce Epalxellidae?? 😂 #ProtistsOnSky

Happening tomorrow!

🎃 👻 Happy Halloween! Last-minute costume idea: giant tubeworm. 🦑 🌊

New paper out! 💌🔬Spirorhynchus verrucosus is a Muranotrichean and its sister has been livin' in the deep sea Santa Barbara Basin since the 90's! See them TUFTS!! Wonderful work of B Bourland & Cepicka Lab, R Beinart, & J Bernhard enabling deep sea sampling. Read h1.nu/spiror #ProtistsOnSky #MicroSky

✨🌊 The ones who get it, get it. ⬇️ 💭 What are we missing? #URIGSO

Database Release: PPSDB, a Linked Open Data Knowledge Base for Protist–Prokaryote Symbioses onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #jcampubs

I am defending my dissertation titled "Ecology and evolution of anaerobic ciliate methanogen symbioses in marine oxygen depleted environments" on Nov 6 at 9:30 am EST! Message me for the zoom link if you are interested in joining! (Or join in person at beautiful URI GSO) #ProtistsOnSky #SymbioSky

#SymbioSky #MicroSky #ProtistsOnSky the plot thickens 👇 as we all suspected and feared(?), organellogenesis is not straightforward, but rather, well,... a thicket ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Love #protists? Then you'd love this! Beautiful collection of hand-drawn critters represented here at the Oxford-Japan symposium on ethological dynamics in diorama environments sites.google.com/view/oxford-... #ciliates #testateamoeba #diatoms

From MBoC: Wallace F. Marshall (UCSF) and team profile the giant ciliate Stentor pyriformis—symbiotic algae in microtubule baskets, symbiont-dependent phototaxis, and a standard genetic code. Paper: www.molbiolcell.org/doi/10.1091/... #CellBiology

What a lovely find! I adore that I’m always seeing new things, even after 3 years of looking at plankton. This is a ciliate from the family Folliculinidae (thanks for the ID @microbe_guru !). I adore its colour! #marineplankton 🦑

We're hiring for several positions (a post-bac researcher in #transcriptomics, a #phage #postdoc, a senior researcher (broad topics) and a graduate student to work on #ciliates) - find info here: www.marine.usf.edu/genomics/app...

New publication out!

I had such a great time doing this podcast! Thanks @markowenmartin.bsky.social for the chance to talk about snails and their microbial friends.

How bad will it be? Catastrophic. Proposed cuts to #NSF, #NIH, and #NASA will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come. But, this is the WH's *proposed* budget. Speak up now before it is too late. (inflation adjusted $-s below)

Propaganda we're not falling for: 🦈Sharks are scary (amazing creatures, important for the ecosystem) 🌊Benthic invertebrates aren’t cute (they are precious) 🪨Geology is boring (rocks ROCK) 📈Long-term data sets aren't important (they are SO important!) 🔬Science isn’t cool (science rules, obviously)

RFK Jr. says the top scientific journals are “corrupt”. Yet his MAHA disinformation report includes fake references and grossly false statements. Reviewers and editors at any of these journals would have caught these, resulting in its wholesale rejection. Don’t give an inch to this charlatan.

🎺🚨👀 WATCH TODAY: over 200 climate scientists and meteorologists (including NOAA and NASA veterans) are hosting a 100-hour livestream starting **today at 1 PM ET**, exploring how DOGE is impacting weather & climate science. Trailer: youtu.be/-Go-RCg3AjI Watch: wclivestream.com/watch

An open letter highlighting the co-optation of open science language in the latest Executive Order to justify policies that are, in fact, antithetical to open science principles. Read and consider signing with your support. www.standupforscience.net/open-letter-...

Question for #protistsonsky #SymbioSky: what are examples of prokaryotic genera which form mutualistic symbioses with both animals and free-living protists? i know about methanogenic endosymbionts of protists/animals, and examples of pathogenic microbes e.g. with amoeba, looking for more examples!

🎓🌊 A weekend full of celebration, tradition, & new beginnings. Congrats to the Class of 2025! We were proud to honor our graduates at the GSO Shirting Ceremony on Friday & commencement ceremony on Saturday. Here’s to the next chapter for this incredible group of ocean scientists. ➡️ buff.ly/2dXsHqX

Abolish ICE is the compromise position. We need to abolish the entire Department of Homeland Security, which was created after 9-11 with the express purpose of terrorizing immigrant communities, activists, and ordinary people in a sickening display of security theater that does not make anyone safer

Organic food doesn't cause autism. Neither do vaccines. Help stop the madness, spread the word with the new Stand Up For Science microflyer! #StopRFK #SaveScience www.standupforscience.net/microflyer1

Very honored to receive this award!

Eukfinder: a pipeline to retrieve microbial eukaryote genome sequences from metagenomic data | mBio journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Survival of the fittest is not a health care policy - at best it's based on junk science at worst it's rooted in eugenics. #Resist www.theverge.com/health/66136...

Dear Tenured Facility, Over the past 100 days my career trajectory has turned into a question mark. At best, the TT job market just got even crazier, at worst there won’t be research career options in the US when I finish my PhD. It took me a while to find my path and I love being a scientist. 1/x

For #factcheckfriday we want to make it clear RFKJ is NOT banning artificial food dyes. 🍬🍭🍬 But for 2 rare dyes, all he did was ASK food companies to phase out petro-based dyes. The same food companies that will no longer be inspected by the FDA since they canceled routine food inspection. 🙈🙉🙊

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

Brilliant. The "Science Homecoming" project helps scientists place articles in local papers about how Trump & Musk's cuts to science harm their communities. 🧪 on @nature.com

One of the most shocking things I have read for a while: t.co/lg46ijHLDF

#ISEPpapers 26: October 2024 to March 2025 www.isep-protists.com/post/iseppap... Your twenty-sixth digest of papers and preprints published by members of the International Society for Evolutionary Protistology is here! #Protists #Algae #Microbes #Evolution #Bacteria #Archaea #Symbiosis #Parasites

Pope Francis: “As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets & financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or to any problems.”

Striking new study from @archaeon-alex.bsky.social's lab just out in @science.org on multicellular development induced by compression in Archaea: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

NEW: Cory Booker Sets Record with History-Making Speech Watch the highlights 👇

Yet to share our recent paper “Phylogenomic resolution of marine to freshwater dinoflagellate transitions” led by Mahara and @protistwtmostest.bsky.social. Includes work from two @science.ubc.ca undergraduates! 🤩 Freshwater dinoflagellates need more love! 💚 academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...

In his 1957 filibuster, Strom Thurmond said "Negroes ... are not so well qualified to vote as are the white people.” A Black senator just broke the record Thurmond set with that speech. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/cory-bo...

If you are interested in a postdoc opportunity in Europe, I'd suggest you to consider the EU Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship: ec.europa.eu/info/funding... If you are into marine microbial ecology and evolution, I'd love to support your application (see more at merenlab.org). E-MAIL ME NOW! :)

Out today: Exciting intermediate between endosymbiont and organelle identified! Endosymbionts in Angomonas deanei lost nearly all bacterial cell division genes. Instead, we identified a host-encoded protein, ETP9, that became specialized for endosymbiont division. 1/2 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Here's my interview with @stevenstrogatz.com on @quantamagazine.bsky.social's Joy of Why podcast. This was *so much fun*. I was nervous going into it (I really look up to Steve!), but I had a blast and I think this is the best interview I have ever done. Thanks for having me on, folks!

"The idea that scientists can keep... [incorporating] DEI...while adjusting terms to fit the demands of bigoted autocrats bent on hobbling science is to whistle loudly past a graveyard of avoidable error, continued financial cuts and censorship." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Microbial ecosystems and ecological driving forces in the deepest ocean sediments www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... #jcampubs

Finally: LONG COVID. Post-Viral Epidemiology is up. -symptoms -why it happens -who believes in it -why it sucks so bad -what you can do Dr. Wes Ely is THE guy when it comes to Long Covid. Spread this around to anyone it might help -- which is everyone. www.alieward.com/ologies/post...

🚨 New paper alert! 🚨 A robustly rooted tree of eukaryotes sheds light on their deep evolutionary ancestry—suggesting that the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA) may have had an excavate-like cell architecture. 🧵🔬 (1/) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Pre-registration is now open for our second (free) course on phylogenomic data analysis and visualization using ETE, funded by @cziscience.bsky.social First time to cover new ETE4 features: Interactive viz of huge tree, profiling... In Madrid, April 21-25. Travel fellowships available!

you’re fired. wait you’re rehired. email us a list of things you’ve done today wait forget it you’re fired again. come back your job was important. you’re fired. or hired. come in to the office. wait the office has no computers go home. we are the department of government efficiency.