Growing love - when a root meets a symbiotic #Mycorrhiza #fungus See what happens with MycorRhize3D. schornacklabslcu.github.io/MycorRhize3D/ Simulate a tap root in soil with spores. Roots turn red when colonised, just like in this paper journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... Reply for suggestions!

Join physicist and presenter Lucie Green and Astronomer Royal Michele Dougherty FRS as they explore the remarkable life and work of Caroline Herschel, who discovered comets and changed the way we study the stars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JsSqxbfqLE

From single-celled organisms to ciliated epithelia in metazoans, precise positioning of basal bodies (BBs), which anchor motile cilia, is essential for generating fluid flows. Here, I, @raghavan-thiaga.bsky.social, will take you on a brief tour of how cells build this spatial organization.

The kids at the 'Meet the Microswimmers' workshops today were great. They loved building 3D printed microscopes, exploring sand & mint samples, and seeing algae swimming. Thanks Caitlin, @jasonbains.bsky.social, Joe, Paul & Adam for making this happen! #NCLDiscoverFest @newcastleuni.bsky.social

Did you think that small gene regulatory networks are only capable of very simple dynamics? Guess again! Even very simple networks are capable of a rich dynamics. Check out our brand new review paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @perez-carrasco.bsky.social

Excited about our 'Meet the Microswimmers' workshops (fully booked!) this Saturday at the Discover Festival. Kids will get to build their own 3D printed microscope and study microscopic samples. We will also be projecting microalgae swimming live 🔬🦠 #DiscoverFestival @newcastleuni.bsky.social

Excited about our 'Meet the Microswimmers' workshops (fully booked!) this Saturday at the Discover Festival. Kids will get to build their own 3D printed microscope and study microscopic samples. We will also be projecting microalgae swimming live 🔬🦠 #DiscoverFestival @newcastleuni.bsky.social

Pioneering palaeontologist Mary Anning was born #OnThisDay in 1799. Already ground-breaking by aged 12, she discovering the first correctly-identified ichthyosaur skeleton and helped revolutionise our understanding of the prehistoric Earth. She always worked with her dog, Tray. #WomenInSTEM

🚨Job alert in theory/math devbio 🚨 I’m currently advertising postdoc positions to join my group. We’re building reaction-diffusion models to understand some of the amazing things embryos can do. We are based in a beautiful part of Scotland! Please share! www.abdn.ac.uk/jobs/vacanci...

❤️Historians know: "UK universities are a precious commodity. Ten years of dropping this commodity to see where the pieces land is not an education policy worthy of the name. It is neglect bordering on vandalism." royalhistsoc.org/history-and-...

And now it's out! Happy that PNAS selected for the cover this SEM image snapped by @samjlord.bsky.social, one of the most evocative visualizations of Euplotes that I have ever encountered. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Stay tuned for what is shaping up to be some fascinating follow-up in the lab...

ArXiv will ban researchers who upload papers full of AI slop

Born #OnThisDay in 1900 was Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. In her doctoral thesis she concluded stars are primarily composed of hydrogen & helium, an idea dismissed by the establishment of the day. It was later described as "the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy."

🦠Promethearchaeati are archaea with eukaryote-like genes, yet, living mainly in stable subsurface habitats This perspective explains why their traits like slow growth and fragility might be favored there but not at Earth’s surface @ls4space.bsky.social @karenlloyd.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s420...

Fantastic fully funded opportunity in a great lab. We really need those new antibiotics! 🔬🦠🌎 #amr #antibiotics #microbes

How strong is a cyanobacterial colony? We use micropipette force sensors to detach a single cell from a Microcystis colony and find that the EPS matrix is strong, heterogeneous, and becomes even stronger under low nutrient availability. RP and comments are appreciated! arxiv.org/pdf/2604.27760

“They are among more than 1,500 biologists, chemists and other experts at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development who have been laid off, reassigned or pressured to retire. Today, only 124 researchers remain,“ www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/c...

👇

The flagellar length of the bloom forming alga Chatonella marina is diurnally regulated, causing it to swim faster during the day. Excellent work by @azusakage.bsky.social and collaborators 🔬🦠

New preprint alert! 🦠🔬 We quantitatively evaluated the swimming and flagellar movement of Chattonella, a red-tide alga. Chattonella has two unequal flagella, and we found a positive correlation between anterior flagellum length and swimming speed. #protistonsky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Fantastic opportunity to do some very interesting active matter research!

📝 How does fluid flow reshape cyanobacterial blooms? Experiemnts + Theory + Field work, led by Yuri Sinzato to show when colonies break or stick, and why that matters for bloom dynamics. eLife: elifesciences.org/articles/103... Digest: elifesciences.org/digests/1035... #Cyanobacteria #Ecology

Icebergs can self-propel 🧊➡️

Dive into the microscopic world of pond critters! These stunning images reveal ciliates and water bears in incredible detail, showcasing nature's hidden wonders.

Researchers tracked individual diatoms—unicellular photosynthetic microalgae with rigid silica cell walls—as they glided along a surface using mobile adhesive strands that protrude through slits in their cell walls, known as raphes. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/3GnU50YFJwL

We have postdoc openings for data-driven modeling and information flows in living systems, with a focus on embryonic development. mattiaserra.com Requirements: PhD in Physics, Applied Math, or similar; prior exposure to biological data preferred. Please share with potential candidates. Thank you!

Preprint 🌱 Plants build nonlinear vectorial representations of light patterns! Surprising results: Opposing cues cancel, so plants grow towards a weaker tie-breaker light. Plants respond to sum of transduced signals, not physical sum of light: optical “illusions”! 🪩 tinyurl.com/44f83xh8

A new study from an associate scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory shows that two different cell populations in a skate embryo can give rise to the same repeating structures (or “serial homologs”) in the adult. Read the full story here: go.mbl.edu/fft

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

Share as widely as possible. www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/center...

Born #OnThisDay in 1866 was Antonia Maury, astronomer and one of the Harvard Computers. Maury worked on the classification of stellar spectra and binary stars, and was called "the single greatest mind that has ever engaged itself in the field of the morphology of stellar spectra." #WomenInSTEM

A thing of beauty and mystery

I'm backing @peatfree.bsky.social's campaign for a peat free future . Last October the UK Govt committed to ending the sale of peat– but we need action . Sign the petition calling for legislation in 2026 to bring peat sales to an end at long last . actnow.peatfreepartnership.org.uk/end-peat-sal...

Solidarity!

International Congress in Biological Physics, Genova, Italy, 28 June to 3 July 2026. URGENT: submission deadline 25 March. Session topics, plenary and invited speakers: www.icbp2026.org IUPAP Physics of Life medal awarded at meeting. Spread the word - and act quickly to submit your work.

As it’s #IWD26 seems appropriate this message should be heard loud and clear

In 1787, the first paper by a woman was read to a meeting of the Royal Society, Caroline Herschel's 'Account of a new comet'. See more on our interactive timeline: #WomenInSTEM #WomensHistoryMonth https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/women-in-stem/publications-timeline/

#OnThisDay in 1938, American evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis was born. Margulis is most known for developing and popularising the endosymbiotic theory, which explains how eukaryotic cells evolved organelles from simpler prokaryotic organisms that resided within another and became incorporated.

Some algae swim in circles, by exercising exquisite control of their breaststroke. And they switch direction under light of different intensity. Here's how. (No one is yet quite sure why.) physics.aps.org/articles/v19...

Great to see our paper on light-intensity dependent swimming patterns in #Chlamydomonas out now in Phys Rev Lett. as an Editors' suggestion! With a nice commentary by @philipcball.bsky.social. Chlamy actively modulate the beat planes of their #cilia! journals.aps.org/prl/abstract... #protistsonsky

Wish I could attend!

good morning, it’s day 4 of strikes at the University of Essex to save 400 jobs across all departments, the Southend campus and our Foundation programme — many members are worried about making ends meet. if you can, please donate to our strike fund: gofund.me/059af6be8

Happy #FluorescenceFriday! This week we are highlighting an awesome image of an Arabidopsis root from @janmartinek.bsky.social. Check out our post to learn more about the image and about Jan’s research: focalplane.biologists.com/2026/02/13/f... #sciart #plants #microscopy

Next, a glorious combo of maths, metals, and microbial ecology. This one is supervised by Denis Patterson and @blindmath.bsky.social, also at Durham. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

About time! 🦭🦈🐬🐋🐳🐟🐠🐡🦐🦞🦀🦑🐙🪼🦪🪸

The Trust's Early Career Fellowships offer a three-year salaried post for researchers at the beginning of their academic career to undertake a significant piece of research. Interested? Apply here: www.leverhulme.ac.uk/early-career... Closing date: 19 February 2026, 4pm

Born #OnThisDay in 1850 was mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya, who made significant contributions to several fields of mathematics. She was the first woman to be awarded a PhD in mathematics and one of the first women to work as an editor at a scientific journal. #WomenInSTEM

Fabian was quicker :) But yes, we have an open postdoc position in bacterial bioenergetics and membrane biology, using on B. subtilis as the model. Come join us! @cbcb-newcastle.bsky.social is a great place to work, and we are a friendly, international lab. Visa+IHS fees covered. #microsky

Our research scientist Núria Ros-Rocher won the 1st prize @zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social microscopy contest with this beautiful choano colony www.zeiss.fr/microscopie/... 🥳 C. flexa might not yet be a genetic model, but it is now at least a calendar model, which counts for something. I think.