Not something you see in textbooks very often: tripolar mitosis.

🗣️Protist friends! I'm looking to put together a list of key protistology resources for new students joining the lab. What are some of your favourite papers??? 🧪 #protistsonsky

We are happy to share our newest preprint on a novel strain of Ca. Lokiarchaeum ossiferum, that contains an active provirus, capable of excision and independent replication! We propose a novel virus family: Fylgjaviridae. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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...

I don't know, but very curious what his might be. The pseudopodia on one end only, suggest some shell, probably organic and poorly visible...

A great resource from Maia and friends! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

open.spotify.com/episode/1iYc... #ProtistsOnSky

Check out our latest pre-print of our favourite pets - the breviates. This work was led by Zhezhen Yi in collaboration with @andrewjroger.bsky.social and many others! By studying diverse breviates we were able to see how different metabolic pathways can evolved in response to low-oxygen.

Proud and excited to share our work with the community! Helen @helenfoster.bsky.social Foster et al. study how #cilia axonemes are built. 👀 Don't miss the gorgeous and insightful movies by @margotriggi.bsky.social, they really show our discoveries in full action! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

wow! Check out these floating nuclei!

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #protistsonsky

New paper out! Here's a puzzle: phototrophy, the ability to use light for energy, is one of life's great innovations. It evolved early and transformed the biosphere. But it evolved 2x. Why not just once, why not more? Our work suggests the answer is priority effects. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

The Romantic Discovery of Radiolaria in the Ocean #microbiology #Radiolaria #protists #MicroSky doi.org/10.1111/jeu....

Join us at the Evolutionary Biology Centre at Uppsala University. We’re searching for an Assistant Professor in Biology. www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...

Cilia alert! Stoked to have the new paper from Juyeon Hong about a new domain at the extreme distal tip of motile cilia! (The EDT, y'all!) It's out now @natcomms.nature.com. Check it out! #cilia www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Please share🙏: Our lab opens 2 PhD positions to investigate fungi's evolution: #Barcelona Wet lab in Biochemistry/Structural Biology of cryo-tolerant fungi www.upf.edu/documents/d/... Computational in Physical Chemistry of cellular processes under extrem environments www.upf.edu/documents/d/...

@fmikus.bsky.social just showed me this #UExM image ... I mean ! What do you think its is 😍😍

🐟🐚🦪🦐🦀 Seeking candidates for a PhD/postdoc opportunity via IMPACT+ program in protistology+aquaculture in Halifax. For more info, contact me by Feb 5th or see: slamo.biochem.dal.ca/call-for-app... #aquaculture #microsky #marinelife #protistsonsky #microalgae #protists

Eukan: a fully automated nuclear genome annotation pipeline for less studied and divergent eukaryotes academic.oup.com/nargab/artic... #protists

The symbiont-harboring trypanosomatid Angomonas deanei is Parasite of the Month. 🙂 authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Isadonna Tengganu and Ke Hu develop transfection and ExM protocols for Chromera velia, enabling direct comparisons with its parasitic apicomplexan relative, Toxoplasma gondi. journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

If you're interested in biodiversity in freshwater ecosystems, there's just a few days to apply for our PhD project: Ecological Surveillance using High-Throughput Quantitative Imaging at @uniofbath.bsky.social . Deadline: January 16th! Apply: is.gd/svXBcr Image: www.planktoscope.org/how-it-works

How a parasite gave up sex to find more hosts—and why its victory won't last phys.org/news/2026-01... Host range expansion of asexual parasite can be explained by loss of adaptions in Muller’s Ratchet www.nature.com/articles/s41... #Protists #Microbes #Parasites #Giardia #Evolution

Really happy with our first expanded Paulinella picture! 😁 #ExM: @fburki.bsky.social Confocal microscopy: @annewalraven.bsky.social

Thought I would share an SEM image of a Meringosphaera I picked at Klubban (West Coast of Sweden) for my first post on Bluesky :) #protistsonsky

Shelled #amoeba crawls like an octopus, shifting tactics on the go phys.org/news/2026-01... Statistical and mechanical analysis of multi-pseudopodial locomotion in a testate amoeba, #Arcella sp. www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/pjab... #Protists #Microbes #Amoebae

A free, open-access library of high-quality organism illustrations for science communication

It was speculated that there's some degree of DNA exchange between algae & sea slug to create the "support system" for the chloroplasts, but in at least one species, that appears not to be the case. Changes in the expression of the sea slug genes were sufficient to support the kleptoplasty.

Finally, we’ve solved a long-standing mystery: what tintinnid shells are actually made of: A new class of biomaterial formed by remarkable structural proteins unique to tintinnids. A major milestone after 3 years of work! Read about it in our preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202... #ProtistsOnSky

End-of-year preprint dump! A collaboration with @messorensen.bsky.social and German and Korean colleagues: "The phylogenetic context for the origin of a unique purple-green photosymbiosis " doi.org/10.64898/202...

🚨 Surprise podcast episode alert! 🚨 This week on Tiny Living Beings, I interviewed @oliverio.bsky.social and @hbrappap.bsky.social who led the discovery of the ‘fire amoeba’, that can reproduce at the highest temperature ever recorded for a eukaryote! 🌋 #protistsonsky

Amazing several millimeters diameter single* celled acantharian. It is huge. *presumably it is multi-nucleated and has hundreds of symbionts, but still! Way bigger than the ones I see locally. Only one set of spikes!

Just on time for the holidays! Happy to share the published version of the discovery of leptophytes, a new deep-branching and widespread group of microalgae based on plastid MAGs (ptMAGs). Now with additional support from a mitochondrial MAG (mtMAG) of leptophytes. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Everything you always wanted to know about... Aphelids.. but were afraid to ask.🦠🔬🧬?🍄?

New preprint out! Using ~75k environmental OTUs + 77 fossil calibrations, we reconstructed a Proterozoic timeline of eukaryote evolution. Our results show crown eukaryotes were already diversifying >1.6 Ga, long before the first undisputed fossils (~1.05 Ga). 🔗 DOI: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#Diplonemids are among the most diverse & abundant #protists in the deep #ocean. This study localises >5,000 proteins of #Paradiplonema papillatum, revealing #organelle compartmentalisation, including a membrane coated with carbohydrate-degrading enzymes @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3XvmpIO

Had a great time interviewing Dr. Lilach Sheiner (@sheinerlab.bsky.social) for the latest edition of ISOP’s Protistology Newsletter. Check it out here! #ProtistsOnSky #Toxoplasma #Science

Wow! Radler et al. doi.org/10.1101/2025... These are #asgardarchaea with what? Pseudopodia? Should we call them archaepodia analogously to archaellum? Mindblowing anyway!

And another Asgard paper. Cells in motion! Wow! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

hard to say to be honest, but I catch some euglenid, or at least euglenozoan vibes. @kristina-prokina.bsky.social, what you think? Any estimate of size?

The conoid is a structure in #Apicomplexans that extrudes during egress, gliding motility & invasion. This study shows that the coiled-coil protein RNG2 tethers the conoid to the apical polar ring in #Toxoplasma and is essential for invasion @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/489blpq

Very cool! An instant short comment: #centrohelids can indeed be colonial, so maybe they also deserve a dot on Fig. 1

www.nature.com/articles/s41... #protistsonsky

🎉 There are currently 4 opportunities to join the Holt lab in beautiful Bath! 🎉 If you're interested in protists, parasites, and/or biodiversity then please check out our website: theholtlab.com/posts/ln5-21... 🚨 Deadlines vary between project. ✉️ Please reach out if you have any questions!

Introducing ** Incendiamoeba **, a eukaryote that can live at temperatures well beyond what we thought possible. 63C!! Read @hbrappap.bsky.social thread to see what we’ve already started to learn from this amazing organism! doi.org/10.1101/2025... #MicroSky #protistsonsky 🧪 #evobio

📢 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)

Happy to share that my PhD project is finally published!🪱✨ Selfish genes are found across the tree of life. They can disrupt inheritance patterns and at the same time act as units for molecular innovation. Here we tried to answer one big question: how do selfish genes emerge in the first place?

New #ISEPpapers! Natural and artificial variations of the standard genetic code www.cell.com/current-biol... #Protists #TreeOfLife #Evolution #Microbes #Genetics

New paper out: An archaeal genetic code with all TAG codons as pyrrolysine: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Understanding the relationship between #foraminifera & their #symbionts can help corals phys.org/news/2025-09... Specific host - #algae relationship, yet flexible bacterial #microbiome, in diatom-bearing foraminifera: Elsa Girard et al. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #Protists #Microbes #Diatoms