With our old friends Sergey, Luis and Guifré, we have published a minireview in @currentbiology.bsky.social about aphelids, the sister group to fungi, including why we think they are not fungi but, nevertheless, key to understand early fungal evolution. authors.elsevier.com/a/1mH793QW8S...

Near the end of the year, we are excited to welcome three new members to the team: Inés Ochoa (PhD student), and Charley McCarthy and Eva Zanditenas (postdocs). They will work on different projects using experimental and bioinformatics approaches.

Microbial eukaryotes keep challenging assumptions about eukaryotic cell and genome biology. Our upcoming workshop explores the frontier of protist genomics and how it shapes cell biology, ecology and evolution. Please save the date! Talks, posters and ECR events Websites and details coming soon

SMBE2026 Symposium 12 | Reconstructing the deep Tree of Life: challenges and new approaches 📨 Abstract submission smbe2026.org/abstracts 📋 Programme details smbe2026.org/programme #SMBE2026

Those interested in performing maximum likelihood phylogenomic analysis on data sets made up of eukaryotic nuclear genes using site heterogeneous mixture models like C60, I suggest you use the ELM model in IQ-TREE instead of the LG model /1

Discussing the origin and evolution of life in an ancient church during the meeting of the French Astrobiology Society

According to the microbial ecologist Puri López-García, pictured here at a salt flat in the Chilean Andes, some 25% to 50% of all bacterial cells may be parasites of other cells.

Bernabeu, @microbiobits.bsky.social and @tonigabaldon.bsky.social use simulations to test for the robustness of inferred relative timings of gene transfers in the lineage leading to the ancestor of eukaryotes 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf190 #genome #evolution

Dive into our November issue featuring: 🪆nested archaeal symbioses 🌱microbiota driven drought responses in plants 🏗️ BAM complex in Bacteroidota 💨microbial fermentative growth in the gut 🍸hospital-specific phage therapy cocktail and much more..! www.nature.com/nmicrobiol/v...

This paper has been a must! Great collaboration with @mkrupovic.bsky.social and @yifanzhou.bsky.social, a N&V by a legend of halophilic archaea tinyurl.com/yc3dcv72, and one picture of one of our expeditions to Dallol making the cover of the November issue of @natmicrobiol.nature.com rdcu.be/eLtCH

How did life begin, and why does it matter? Scientists are tracing early microbial life–from LUCA to multicellularity–to unlock insights for biotech, climate science and even space exploration. Read the article: asm.org/articles/202...

Mesquite 4.02 update released! It fixes a few bugs and adds Codon Alignment and various other improvements. Also, much faster with genomics files with 1000s of loci. www.mesquiteproject.org 🧪 #evolbio @bembidion.bsky.social

Our @narjournal.bsky.social manuscript is out! It explores the growth of the GTDB (gtdb.ecogenomic.org) since its inception, as well as updates to the website, methodology, policies, and major taxonomic and nomenclatural changes over the past three years. academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

Viruses and virus satellites of haloarchaea and their nanosized DPANN symbionts reveal intricate nested interactions Out now in Nature Microbiology, by Yifan Zhou, Mart Krupovic & colleagues. @mkrupovic.bsky.social @yifanzhou.bsky.social @deemteam.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A nice N&V article by Mike Dyall-Smith on our recent paper ( www.nature.com/articles/s41... ): www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Check out our paper on intricate nested interactions between viruses and virus satellites of haloarchaea and their nanosized DPANN symbionts. Excellent collaboration with @deemteam.bsky.social, @anagtz.bsky.social and Michail Yakimov Free access link: rdcu.be/eLtCH 🧵 by @yifanzhou.bsky.social 👇

A proposal for journal accreditation systems to counter predatory practices. If funding agencies enforced these accreditations, predatory journals would quickly vanish. doi.org/10.1093/fems...

Ponce-Toledo et al. confirm the presence, homology, and monophyletic origin of the SELMA protein complex in Cryptophyta, Alveolata, Stramenopiles, and Haptophyta, shedding light on the evolution of photosynthetic eukaryotes. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf167 #evobio #molbio

Enjoying the mountains that forams built for us (with some help from plate tectonics) long ago.

New paper is out! We have studied the cute tiny Discocelia plataet sp. n. to obtain the first molecular data of the order Discocelida and clarify its cell structure. All this for a better understanding of the evolution of Cercozoa. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

We're very happy to release our new database Metalog metalog.embl.de ! It offers manually curated and harmonised contextual data for 110k metagenomics samples across the globe, incl. precomputed taxonomic profiles, for interactive browsing and for download 🧵 1/7 #microsky

Our paper describing our new improved GFmix models for phylogenetic inference that capture site-and-branch heterogeneity in amino acid composition. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

In our ongoing saga of description of new protists, we are happy to introduce Multisulcus malaysiensis, a deep-branching heterolobosean that forms highly unusual multiflagellated cells with multiple ventral grooves. Great work by @kristina-prokina.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Check out our paper to explore how the evolutionary history of SELMA supports or challenges various hypotheses on the origin of red complex plastids. academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

🚨 Fresh off the press! We have just published our paper on the evolution of the SELMA translocon of red secondary plastids‬. We analyze the phylogeny of each individual protein and the implications for the evolutionary history of the entire complex. academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

Out in @natbiotech.nature.com: Metagenome taxonomy profilers usually ignore unknown species. SingleM is an accurate profiler which doesn't, even detecting phyla with no MAGs. Profiles of 700,000 metagenomes at sandpiper.qut.edu.au. A 🧵

Some ceramic protists from our talented friend Anabel López-Archilla. Do you recognize them?

Partez à la quête des origines de la vie avec Puri Lopez-Garcia, naturaliste du monde microbien ! Puri López-García est chercheuse en biologie et directrice de recherche @cnrs.fr au laboratoire Écologie, société et évolution (ESE - Univ. Paris-Saclay/CNRS/AgroParisTech).   🔗 tinyurl.com/2cm7zn27

The cultivation of anaerobic microbes is essential in geomicrobiology and increasingly impactful in geosciences — yet remains underrepresented.🔬

We are very happy to welcome Benjy Sedano @bencyano7.bsky.social , our new PhD student who will be working with some of our favorite cyanobacteria!

The "most beautiful" but also the most intelligent experiment in biology.

Excited to share our new paper in @cellreports.bsky.social that reshapes our understanding of chromosome organization's deep evolutionary roots! Our work dives into the origins of the machinery that structures our very genomes. 🔗: doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... #Genomics #Evolution #CellBiology #LECA

We have contributed to a paper led by Kenneth Timmis on the murky world of predatory journals: enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

#NewResearch 🚨Out Now Phylogenomic analyses indicate the archaeal superphylum DPANN originated from free-living euryarchaeal-like ancestors, by @bbaker24.bsky.social @deemteam.bsky.social and team #MicroSky #Archaea 🦠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

📣 We are proud of the publication of the second paper of @bbaker24.bsky.social PhD thesis. In collaboration with friends in Halifax we have studied the difficult question of the phylogeny of the DPANN archaea, composed of several phyla of highly reduced, fast-evolving epiparasites 🧵 rdcu.be/erkkU

Some of us have participated in writing the "Early Microbial Life: Our Past, Present, and Future" report, a comprehensive summary of knowledge on early life, from its origins to the emergence of complex multicellular lineages: asm.org/reports/earl...

Mesquite 4.beta2 released! Much faster reading of files with thousands of matrices. New features since 4.beta include Trace All Changes (known from MacClade) and Import GenBank Numbers. www.mesquiteproject.org & discuss at groups.google.com/g/mesquite-p... ‪@bembidion.bsky.social ‬🧪 #evolbio

Puri giving a short speech yesterday at the French Academy of Sciences to acknowledge her nomination as a new member. The fancy Napoleonic-style attire is part of the official Academy's protocol. @academiesciences.bsky.social‬

A brief introduction to the #SeqCode is now online! Check it out, share it with your colleagues, and let us know what you think! Bravo to @rodriguez-r.bsky.social for preparing and recording this! Part# 1 www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-wk...

Our friends of atacamensis.cl have just published this short video about our fieldtrip to the Atacama Desert in March.

Today, the ERC formally adopted a decision to increase its support for researchers moving to Europe. On top of its normal grants, the ERC offers 'start-up' funding to help PIs establish laboratories / research teams in Europe. This extra funding is now x2 (up to €2 million!) europa.eu/!6Vdgmp

The ERC welcomes the offer of substantial additional budget from @ec.europa.eu for the development of a new ERC funding instrument offering larger, longer-term grants, as announced by President Ursula Von der Leyen at the Sorbonne this morning. 👉 europa.eu/!NTYTTV

#ESEB2025 Exciting symposium alert: (S50) Unravelling the origin of eukaryotes. 🦑🌴 With speakers Purificación López-García and Mark Field. We are looking forward to your abstract submissions! eseb2025.com/list-of-symp... @julianvosseberg.bsky.social

Not really my announcement to make--I am but a lesser co-author--but IQ-TREE 3 has just been released! (Most credit to Minh Bui and @roblanfear.bsky.social and their labs) ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Some volcanoes reflected in the turquoise waters of Laguna Brava.

Working in another world: Salar de Carcote

These arid evaporitic landscapes of the Atacama Desert are often referred to as "Mars analogues" (probably with excessive optimism). Yet, one only has to turn over the salt crust to discover colorful microbial life.

Amazing transition between living microbialites, a photosynthetic microbial mat, and fossil microbialites in a high-altitude salt flat in Chile

Walking to our sampling point on a vast microbial mat (pink-salmon areas) in Laguna Azufrera, with the fumaroles of the Lastarria volcano visible on the horizon.

Frozen morning in our camp at Lagunas Bravas (4250 m high).