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

Weird word of the day: "kleptosquamy." The testate amoeba Awerintzewia cyclostoma steals scales from other amoeboid organisms to build its own shell. This one has robbed Quadrulella, Netzelia, various euglyphids, and even an Acanthocystis. Kleptosquamy! #amoebae #ProtistsOnSky #biology #nature

VERY cool!

😍👍🦠

Out today, our take on 6-methyladenine #6mA evolution in Eukaryotes @natgenet.nature.com. We asked a simple question, is really DNA 6mA common across the eukaryotes? The answer is "yes" if you're a unicellular eukaryote 🦠, not so if you're multicellular 🐝🌱🍄. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/9

Our work on Naegleria Myosin 2 is out! Naegleria encodes 3 Myo2s which contract its actin network—the first evidence of contractile Myo2 outside of Amorphea. Myo2 is actually widespread in Naegleria's relatives and correlates with fast cell crawling. Read more: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Very cool, little doubt though about the word "most". I have a feeling that (predatory) feeding on invertabrates is quite common. E. g. here (10.1016/j.ijppaw.2020.09.003) they say "around one-half"

Let me use this as an opportunity to talk about Jordi et al's very cool paper, now out in PNAS 🧪: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... You can read our news and views here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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

Very excited to share this one! Our comprehensive structure, genetics and biophysics dissection of which flagellar dyneins and other proteins are needed for flagella to beat and drive cells swimming behaviours: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Wound healing is a hallmark feature of all life, including single cells. In a new preprint, Ambika Nadkarni @biochembika.bsky.social investigates a new dimension in cellular wound healing: how cells recover AFTER the wound has been closed www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Oligonucleotide design meets big data: We present oligoN-design, a simple, reproducible and versatile open-source tool to design specific primers and probes directly from large environmental DNA datasets. 🔗 DOI: doi.org/10.1101/2025... 👉 github.com/MiguelMSandi...

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...

We have a great PhD project supported by SWBio Doctoral Training Partnership at @uniofbath.bsky.social for 2026! Come and apply cutting-edge sequencing approaches to tackle animal health in aquaculture! We'll be characterising protist parasites to learn more about their interactions and evolution 🐟

hah, I usually go for human eyelashes 🙃, but curious to try toothbrush bristles now!

The origins and molecular evolution of sperm https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.03.685759v1

✨X-ray crystallography reveals surprising twist in how proteins enter the unique photosynthetic organelles of Paulinella. The chromatophore targeting peptide (crTP) folds into a 3D structure, hinting that folded proteins cross peptidoglycan and inner membrane. (1/2) academic.oup.com/plphys/artic...

Absolutely stunning FIB-SEM, and a very cool story. Perfect timing for the endosymbiosis portion of my Evo Cell Bio course where we just covered a paper on Paulinella...

I just made an account and voted for this biology laboratory made of LEGO to "promote biological research and inspire more people into the world of biology". They need 10K votes. Reposting and/or voting below would be helpful. 🤗 beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

A new preprint from us using a single-cell genome pipeline to investigate diversity of uncultured Bodo spp. flagellates. We isolated 7 Bodo spp. cells from a single environmental sample and show that they represent 3 Bodo sp. each with a unique species of bacterial endosymbiont. #protistsonsky

Cell size matters: a unifying theory across the tree of life www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How to upgrade stolen organelles into permanent plastids: A comparative transcriptomic perspective | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... #protistsonsky

Everybody makes money out of academic authors except the authors...News. Wiley is the latest academic publisher to reach a multi-million deal to allow access to its content to AI developers, with no opt out, let alone payment, for the authors who created that content.

Latest from ours: www.cell.com/cell-reports... This is two stories in one: a case study/cautionary tale on developing genetic tools in new organisms, and the first hint at a gene regulatory network for choanoflagellate multicellular development (which turn out to involve a Hippo/YAP/ECM loop!) A 🧵

🌊 Happy to share our recent study on phytoplankton dynamics! We found that communities can shift dramatically in just a few days - driven by grazers like Cladocera and environmental factors such as silica concentration and wind speed. t.co/PaL0QcofrV

quite scared one! If you give quiet time it will show its "ears" :)

👍

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