Integration and regulation of stolen organelles in a marine protist academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc... #jcampubs

Integration and regulation of stolen organelles in a marine protist

Abstract. Chloroplast-stealing (a.k.a., “kleptoplastidic”) plankton transiently obtain and integrate prey metabolic machinery into their own cells. To do s

academic.oup.com

Preprint📣: Living tissues can exhibit odd mechanics without chirality. Our minimal model shows that orientational order can generate an odd modulus—inferable from experiments—and reproduces flows & stress localization around 1/2 defects. @sreejithsanthosh.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Eukaryotic-like microtubules and dynamic instability of Asgard archaeal tubulins #eukaryotes #archaea #MicroSky @science.org www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Eukaryotic-like microtubules and dynamic instability of Asgard archaeal tubulins

Asgard archaeal mini microtubules suggest an archaeal origin of eukaryotic microtubules.

science.org

Cell biology: Cytoplasmic rivers carry molecular cargo: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Cell biology: Cytoplasmic rivers carry molecular cargo

Molecules in the cytoplasm of an animal cell move by diffusion, motor activity, and/or fluid flow. A recent study demonstrates how directed, but often subtle, cytoplasmic drift currents carry cytoskel...

cell.com

Do #tintinnids dream of electric sheep? 🤯 Here is a single cell capable of building a lorica and living inside it for protection... it also swims, feeds, hunts Can even detect and habituate to mechanical cues! #celllearning #protistsonsky #cilia Read more in our preprint doi.org/10.64898/202...

So happy to share our new paper out now in @natmicrobiol.nature.com! We establish Pirsonia-Coscinodiscus as a model pathosystem and uncover how this tiny parasite infects and kills bloom-forming marine diatoms 🌊🦠 rdcu.be/fuQyF

Had a lot of fun writing this dispatch article for @currentbiology.bsky.social with PhD student Caitlin Doyle www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti..., highlighting cell morphogenesis and recent work on suctorian growth control principles. 1/3

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Sol-gel Transition Drives Hyper-fast Mixing in a Giant Cell super cool work on longstanding question about gel-sol transitions in cells using the giant amoeba Chaos carolinensis! @wallaceucsf.bsky.social

📢 APPLICATIONS OPEN! Applications are open for the MBL’s Semester in Biological Discovery, a spring semester or quarter program that provides an immersive research experience in discovery-driven biological sciences modeled on the MBL’s world-renowned ARTCs. 🔗 mbl.edu/sbd

Semester in Biological Discovery (SBD) | Marine Biological Laboratory

The MBL's Semester in Biological Discovery (SBD) is a 12-week program that provides an immersive research experience in discovery-driven biological sciences modeled on the MBL's world-renowned Advanced Research Training Courses. The SBD program is also ...

mbl.edu

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Multiple evolutionary routes to cytoskeletal arborization revealed by the rhizarian amoeba Filoreta ramosa

Excited to share our new paper, now published in Nature Cell Biology! 🎉 We asked a fundamental question in cell biology: How do cells maintain polarity while migrating? Especially how do cancer cells navigate confined spaces? www.nature.com/articles/s41556-026-01981-1

CD44 restricts EGFR mobility to polarize cytoskeletal signalling modules driving bleb-based migration - Nature Cell Biology

Jha et al. show that the transmembrane protein CD44 restricts EGFR mobility to maintain an EGFR–PI3K–Rac gradient during bleb-based cell migration.

nature.com

Discovery of an adhesion GPCR regulating mating in choanoflagellates, by Alain Garcia de las Bayonas & Nicole King. Absolutely stunning work - choano cell biology is going next level www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Had a blast putting this video abstract together with colleagues for @zjmaggiexu.bsky.social story in @currentbiology.bsky.social on how the "vampire cell" P. collini builds the perfect feeding trap 👀. Be sure to check out the full paper: www.cell.com/current-biol... www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikzm...

A cellular vampire builds the perfect feeding trap / Curr. Biol., June 24, 2026 (Vol. 36, Issue 14)

YouTube video by Cell Press

youtube.com

1/11 🤩Sooooo happy to see this work on a new new group #algae. Looks like #centrohelids - predatory ancient eukaryotic lineage sometimes harbor vertically-inherited plastids from #dictyochophytes. Amazing work, @annewalraven.bsky.social, glad to be on board! More below:

Anne Walraven@annewalraven.bsky.social · last mo.

Very excited that the preprint of the main paper of my PhD is now out! We show that Meringosphaera is the first centrohelid with permanent plastids: doi.org/10.64898/202... @zlatogursky.bsky.social, @pjkeelinglab.bsky.social, prof. Rachel A. Foster, and @fburki.bsky.social #protistsonsky

New #ISEPpapers! Eukaryovorous Predation in Evolutionarily Significant Excavate‐Like Flagellates pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... #Protists #Microbes #Evolution

@zjmaggiexu.bsky.social's story on suctorian trap structure adaptation is now online in @currentbiology.bsky.social , with new evolutionary analyses and modeling! This fall, Maggie will keep exploring predatory protists as a PD in @nbellono.bsky.social group; keep an eye out for her she's amazing!

Scott Coyle@cellraiser.bsky.social · 9mo ago

How do cells adapt morphology to function? In a 🔥 preprint by @zjmaggiexu.bsky.social , with @dudinlab.bsky.social and @amyweeks.bsky.social , we identify a self-organizing single-cell morphology circuit that optimizes the feeding trap structure of the suctorian P. collini. 🧵 tinyurl.com/4k8nv926

Folks, mind the suctorian trap!

Zhejing (Maggie) Xu@zjmaggiexu.bsky.social · last mo.

Our updated full story on suctorian trap structure adaptation now online in @currentbiology.bsky.social! Huge thanks to Scott and all the co-authors for all the wow moments along the way! Also, if you’d like some new #protist #suctorian, let’s know! (They are surprisingly easy roommates/predators) 🤠

I had a ton of fun the other day talking with @nonresidentdesi.bsky.social and @scifri.bsky.social 's Flora Lichtman and Rasha Aridi about murderous microbes and the things that we are trying to learn from them. Happy for the opportunity to bring some new awareness to the world of protists!

Science Friday@scifri.bsky.social · last mo.

Researchers like Ben Larson and Glen D’Souza are piecing together the world of killer microbes, including why they turn on each other and if their tiny weapons could be harnessed to fight disease. Listen to the podcast now: www.sciencefriday.com/segments/kil...

Researchers like Ben Larson and Glen D’Souza are piecing together the world of killer microbes, including why they turn on each other and if their tiny weapons could be harnessed to fight disease. Listen to the podcast now: www.sciencefriday.com/segments/kil...

Swords, cannibalism, poison: inside the world of killer microbes

Some microbe species have evolved to stab, bomb, cannibalize, or poison each other. Can we harness their weapons for good?

sciencefriday.com

Meet Euplotes gigatrox, a super-giant cannibal captured with a scanning electron microscope for our #PictureOfTheWeek. Image credit: Ben Larson and Samuel Lord

New #ISEPpapers #PrePrint! A billion-year-old bacterial machinery replicates plastid DNA and supports kleptoplastidy www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #Protists #Algae #Microbes #Evolution #Bacteria

Looking for your next step after a BS/BA or MS in biology, cell biology, biochemistry, or a related field? My NIH lab in Bethesda, MD is looking for a Lab Manager/Technical Specialist. Interested in basic research? Please email me directly or learn about our lab here: irp.nih.gov/pi/justin-ta...

Happy to finally share that I will be starting my independent group at the @fmiscience.bsky.social in Feb 2027 in a vibrant new environment. We will use integrative in situ structural cell biology methods to investigate ciliary structure and dynamics in several model (and non-model 👀) systems!!

[1/n] Our preprint-in-progress on RNA regionalization in Stentor is no longer in progress! Now @pnas.org 🥳 Turns out a single cell isn't a homogenous soup… it has molecular geography, including things like regionalized transcription factors. Think bicoid, but in a ciliate.

Genome-wide analysis of mRNA regionalization in a giant single cell | PNAS

The molecular mechanisms that produce cell structure are poorly understood. The giant ciliate Stentor coeruleus is a unicellular model organism who...

pnas.org

Protists that build houses! Fascinating structural insights here into mechanisms of self-assembly

Maximilian Ganser@mhganser.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Tiny unicellular #eukaryotes, big #biomaterial inspiration. Excited to share our Nature Communications study showing that tintinnid ciliates build their chemical- and heat-resistant shells from self-assembling proteins we call Tintinnidorins. doi.org/10.1038/s414... #protistsonsky 1/3

Tiny unicellular #eukaryotes, big #biomaterial inspiration. Excited to share our Nature Communications study showing that tintinnid ciliates build their chemical- and heat-resistant shells from self-assembling proteins we call Tintinnidorins. doi.org/10.1038/s414... #protistsonsky 1/3

Big paper from @hejnol.bsky.social lab. Title says it all. Congrats, Stanislav Kremnyov and the team. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A blastoporal organizer in a ctenophore - Nature

Experiments using the comb jelly Mnemiopsis leidyi and the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis reveal that the emergence of a core signalling pathway may have been a key innovation enabling the transit...

nature.com

Meet Holdonia, a new member of the chrompodellid clade. Found clinging to a polychaete, this little guy reveals that similar patterns in plastid reduction have occurred independently across chrompodellid and related lineages. @rhizalyssa.bsky.social @pjkeelinglab.bsky.social tinyurl.com/2t25xb6z

The evolutionary transition from alga to parasite in the sister lineage of apicomplexans

The chrompodellids are a collection of photosynthetic “chromerids” and heterotrophic “colpodellids,” which are together the sister lineage to the apic…

tinyurl.com

Getting nuclear size just right – emerging mechanisms regulating nuclear scaling and morphology @jcellsci.bsky.social journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

How ancient are the building blocks of animal sensory systems? Key components of animal sensory systems evolved before animals. We find that choanoflagellates possess diverse & spatially segregated TRP channels, pointing to ancient origins of sensory specialization. doi.org/10.64898/202...