Brett Baker
@archaeal.bsky.social
Professor of microbial ecology and evolution at Univ of Texas Austin.
I'm looking for an enthusiastic student to join my team as a PhD candidate on archaeal genome evolution 🦠💻 Work in beautiful Utrecht, at @binfutrecht.bsky.social, an international group full of caring, amazing scientists, and with frequent cake breaks! www.uu.nl/en/organisat... Please share! 🙏
uu.nl
A step forward in discovering Buchnera's key to the aphid's heart, published today! Thanks to Jerry Maeda and other authors--a great team -- and to the helpful reviewers #SymbioSky doi: doi.org/10.1038/s415...
A secreted endosymbiont protein essential for colonizing host cells - Nature
SyeA was present in the Buchnera ancestor, is secreted into the host cytoplasm, is homologous to secreted effectors of bacterial pathogens and is essential for Buchnera transmission.
doi.org
Last day of #ASMicrobe, with a lot of exciting talks and sessions still to come ! Including one near and dear to my heart: long-term dynamics of environmental microbiomes, where we'll hear all about time-series 'omics datasets across many ecosystems, from rivers to soils to insects (and more) 🎉
In 2025, HHS issued stop work order for federal research lab that studies Ebola virus and other deadly pathogens and fired its director. This lab was a world leader in accelerating development therapies and vaccines for Ebola and other viruses. 1/ www.wired.com/story/hhs-ni...
RFK Jr.’s HHS Orders Lab Studying Deadly Infectious Diseases to Stop Research
NIAID’s Integrated Research Facility is one of the few federal facilities charged with studying Ebola. Tuesday afternoon, all of its work was put on indefinite pause by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s departm...
wired.com
Join CPSH on Monday, April the 27th for our #CPSHSeminarSeries with Christopher German from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute! Check out the link in our bio to learn more.
Save the date - April 29-30 is #UT40for40! This year, contributions to the Center for Planetary Sciences Habitability will go directly to support students and postdoctoral researchers through fellowships and travel grants. Join us next week to support the next generation of planetary researchers!
I predicted someone like Trump many years ago, in THE DEAD ZONE. So now I'm saying this--in the next 12-16 months, we're going to find out if the two machines for the removal of a man unable to fulfill his duties actually work. They are impeachment and the 25th amendment. He is deeply unwell .
Our work on 'hidden diversity' in unbinned contigs is now published in @natmicrobiol.nature.com : www.nature.com/articles/s41... See the linked threads for more details!
Unbinned contigs expand known diversity in the global microbiome - Nature Microbiology
Re-analysis of over 92,000 metagenomes reveals hundreds of thousands of previously undescribed Bacterial and Archaeal clades hidden in plain sight.
nature.com
Sebastian Schmidt@tsbschm.bsky.social · 9mo agoWe've updated our recent @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social on 'Hidden but discoverable diversity in the global microbiome', led by @vishnuprasoodanan.bsky.social & @omaistrenko.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Having a hard time keeping up with the fast-moving field of origin of eukaryotes/Asgards archaea? Our new perspective article can help, we review the status of research over the last decade and where it's going. The archaeal roots of eukaryotic life www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Scientists are one step closer to understanding the origins of complex life on Earth after shedding new light on a mystery about our microbial ancestors. https://cnn.it/4srOEWd
Fun new paper out today - a collaboration led by @stephkoe.bsky.social and @ettema.bsky.social found lots of new Euk-like proteins in Asgard Archaea www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Prediction of eukaryotic cellular complexity in Asgard archaea using structural modelling - Nature Microbiology
A structural catalogue of the Asgard archaeal pangenome reveals hundreds of eukaryotic-like proteins that suggest a higher degree of cellular complexity in the archaeal ancestor of eukaryotes.
nature.com
Anyone have any new Asgards to read? If not, we have a new one coming on Monday haha.
🧵 1/10 New paper out in @natmicrobiol.nature.com from my postdoc at @mib-wur.bsky.social! 🎉 How eukaryote-like was the archaeal ancestor of eukaryotes? Sequence searches alone can't tell us — so we used protein structure prediction to look deeper. 🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Prediction of eukaryotic cellular complexity in Asgard archaea using structural modelling - Nature Microbiology
A structural catalogue of the Asgard archaeal pangenome reveals hundreds of eukaryotic-like proteins that suggest a higher degree of cellular complexity in the archaeal ancestor of eukaryotes.
nature.com
Finally out in @natmicrobiol.nature.com: Prediction of eukaryotic cellular complexity in Asgard archaea using structural modelling. Great work by @stephkoe.bsky.social @kassipan.bsky.social @jvhooff.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#NatMicroPicks Aerobic archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor? 🦠🫁 The ancestor of eukaryotes may have combined hydrogen metabolism with aerobic respiration, shaping early cellular complexity. #MicroSky www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Oxygen metabolism in descendants of the archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor - Nature
Sequencing of marine sediments finds 136 newly identified Heimdallarchaeia and several novel lineages, and indicates that Heimdallarchaeia evolved distinct metabolic capabilities from other Asgar...
nature.com
Nature research paper: Oxygen metabolism in descendants of the archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor go.nature.com/4rSfRRw
Oxygen metabolism in descendants of the archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor - Nature
Sequencing of marine sediments finds 136 newly identified Heimdallarchaeia and several novel lineages, and indicates that Heimdallarchaeia evolved distinct metabolic capabilities from other Asgardarchaeota, in conditions that may have given rise to early eukaryotes.
go.nature.com
By combining the ecological and evolutionary analyses, we present a Heimdallarchaeia-centric model for the origin of eukaryotes, based on our expanded genomic catalogue. #eukaryogenesis 9/12
Cytochrome c oxidase subunits in Heimdallarchaeia show sequence homology and structural similarity to eukaryotic Complex IV. Thus, providing a new perspective of the increasing complexity of the electron transport chain in these archaea. 8/12
Sequence and structural analysis of [NiFel-hydrogenases and flanking Complex I-like subunits identified 19 novel subgroups (doubling groups 3 and 4). Extensive structural analyses across Asgardarchaeota may further bridge the evolution of group 4 [NiFel-hydrogenases and Complex I. 7/12
Our findings show the current closest archaeal order to eukaryotes, Hodarchaeales, has been identified primarily in shallow coastal sediments and encode cytochrome c oxidase, heme biosynthesis, & responses to reactive oxygen species. Hodarchaeales also co-occur with Alphaproteobacteria. 6/12
At long last! Check out the link to our publication in @nature.com to learn more. doi.org/10.1038/s415... 12/12
Oxygen metabolism in descendants of the archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor - Nature
Sequencing of marine sediments finds 136 newly identified Heimdallarchaeia and several novel lineages, and indicates that Heimdallarchaeia evolved distinct metabolic capabilities from other Asgar...
doi.org
Cross-post on LinkedIn, since everyone is on LinkedIn these days: www.linkedin.com/posts/jamesl...
Very excited to share our work published today in Nature: ‘Oxygen metabolism in descendants of the archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor’. This was a huge effort led by the amazing Kathryn Appler from Brett…...
Very excited to share our work published today in Nature: ‘Oxygen metabolism in descendants of the archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor’. This was a huge effort led by the amazing Kathryn Appler from Brett ...
linkedin.com
