Fully funded #PhD Studentship available in collaboration with the PI Christos Velanis (OU, UK). The Polycomb Gatekeeper: PRC2-Mediated Genome Defence and Allele-Specific Expression in the #diatom Fragilariopsis cylindrus. @ueaenv.bsky.social @norwichmicro.bsky.social centa.ac.uk/studentship/...

Stentor coeruleus is a unicellular protist with amazing wound healing and regenerative abilities, making it amenable to grafting and micro surgical experiments. In the spirit of the Halloween season, I channeled my Dr. Frankenstein energy and created a 7-headed Stentor #protistsonsky

Relatives of apicomplexan parasites (protists) that live on or infect corals, fireworms, fish, and sea cucumbers! @ambonacolta.bsky.social talks about how he finds and characterizes new protist species in the oceans. asm.org/podcasts/tin...

Protist Parasites of Corals and Fish - With Anthony Bonacolta

Relatives of apicomplexan parasites (protists) that live on or infect corals, fireworms, fish, and sea cucumbers! Dr. Anthony Bonacolta talks about how he finds and characterizes new protist species i...

asm.org

Postdoc opportunity! Join PERKFresh project and explore Perkinsea diversity, ecology & host–parasite interactions in freshwaters 📍 University of Warsaw ⏰ Deadline: 6 Nov 2026 🔗 euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/466845 #protistonsky #postdoc

1/3 Remember our #Magnificent8? 8 mysterious lineages related to animals, known only from environmental DNA. 🧬 We suspected they were just the tip of the iceberg, hiding many more "unknown unknowns". Our new preprint suggests we were right. 🧵 👉https://bit.ly/3TUYowB #protistsOnSky

We've been funded to start using Dictyostelium as a model system for early endomembrane evolution!! Now I'm hiring a Postdoc to join the lab in Edmonton and start playing with Dicty in the lab:) iaejup.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Postdoctoral Scholar – Evolutionary Cell Biology

This position has an initial appointment of 2 years. Location - This role is hybrid with a mix of remote and in-person work at North Campus Edmonton. About the Role The Dacks Lab is seeking a highly m...

iaejup.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com

Amazing work from Erandi and the MicDiv team on Filoreta! So cool to see my favorite amoeba getting the attention it deserves!

Marine Biological Laboratory@mblscience.bsky.social · last wk.

A video of Filoreta ramosa, a fascinating protist that can form multinucleate networks, for #MicroscopyMonday. Imaged by Erandi Sachinthanie, Andrew Kennard, Amaranta Kahn, Jason Bear, Annie Rowe, and John Spear (@spearmicrobe.bsky.social) from the 2026 Microbial Diversity course.

Please enjoy this new offering from the lab: we discover that #excavates - ancient flagellate lineages with a voracious appetite for bacteria - change their behaviour depending on the availability of said prey! Preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #protistsonsky

and 4. Taq polymerase and 5. Macrolids hint from #apicoplast. But also, not much else I can think of. 🙄 And I don't think this is how fundamental science should be justified. Curiosity and necessity to understand the world, not this practically useful "side effects" should be the main thing.

Itai Yanai@itaiyanai.bsky.social · last wk.

1. CRISPR came from basic research on bacteria. 2. Optogenetics started with a discovery in algae. 3. The GFP protein comes from jellyfish. The biggest breakthroughs all trace to scientists following their curiosity, and this is one huge reason why we must keep funding basic research!

#Desmodorids are usually parasited by #epibionts (suctorian ciliates). This is so common, that you can find them drawn on the original description of desmodorid species. Picture: Ciliophora, Suctorea of a desmodorid #nematode from Selvagens.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #protistsonsky

Culture-free single-cell transcriptomics shows short-term functional and associative stability in non-model microeukaryotes under shading stress

Microeukaryotes are abundant, diverse, and morphologically and functionally complex. They represent one of the largest groups of primary producers and are involved in major ecosystem functions such as...

biorxiv.org

Thrilled to announce my work on Filoreta, a protist that looks like a neuron! authors.elsevier.com/c/1nvAC3QW8S...

Sarah Guest@sarahmoeba.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Just for fun, here's a game I like to call "Find the neuron" with examples of olfactory sensory neuron images from Šmít et al 2017 (doi.org/10.7554/eLif...) and Filoreta ramosa, a free-living syncytial amoeba from a salt marsh.

Are you interested in learning how genomes of weird fungi and protists evolve and are you looking for an exciting PhD opportunity? Jolien van Hooff and I are looking for an enthusiasic PhD candidate at Wageningen University: www.wur.nl/en/vacancy/p... #TEworldwide #Fungi #Protists #Genome

PhD position in genome evolution and architecture in unicellular eukaryotes

Are you fascinated by how eukaryotic genomes evolve? Do you want to look beyond model organisms and point mutations to uncover the complexity of genome evolution?

wur.nl

wow! I was only aware of 198 and here is >than 230. Thanks you for this important job!

Gaspar Jekely@jekely.biologists.social.ap.brid.gy · 3w ago

Update on: "Unravelling Cell Evolution and the Tree of Life, the Essence of Biodiversity: The Scientific Autobiography of Thomas Cavalier-Smith FRS, FRSC" I added a comprehensive bibliography of the works of Tom Cavalier-Smith as .odt and .bib file, the latter can be used to manage refs […]

We have a new branch in the family tree of animals: Atreyea- a previously unrecognized lineage among the closest unicell relatives of animals. Led by @konsmitsi.bsky.social & @freejakoba.bsky.social together with a fantastic team of collaborators. 🔗 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... #protistsOnSky

Spread the word! I’m looking to recruit a PhD student to grow the Paulinella project. Some details can be found here: www.vanettenlab.org/join

Join! — Van Etten lab at UMD

vanettenlab.org

Joshua Weitz@joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 3w ago

Wonderful profile of our new colleague in the Dept. of Biology in Maryland, @couchmicroscopy.bsky.social with secrets yet to be uncovered into a major evolutionary transition hanging out in murky waters. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/26/s...

Thank you @dackslabecb.bsky.social for all your effort in making our (protistologists) society journal stronger. I am also particularly stocked to be among the recipients of the William Trager Award for the “outstanding paper in the Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology” in 2024.

Dacks Lab (Evolutionary Cell Biology)@dackslabecb.bsky.social · 4w ago

My Summer 2026 Editor in Chief Message for the Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology is now available. It talks about exciting developments at JEM over the past year (higher IF, the Trager Award) and things that we will launch soon. I hope that you enjoy it:) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Move over C. elegans... single celled protist wriggles forwards and backwards! Check out the beautiful ciliary metachronal waves #didinium #protistsonsky

Our paper on the subcellular proteome of Paulinella is finally out! A possible oxygen-scavenging mechanism to enhance RuBisCO carboxylation highlights how protists can reveal unexpected solutions to challenges in photosynthesis. Big kudos to everyone involved! @evanowack.bsky.social

Ben Long@botbml.bsky.social · 3w ago

Spatial proteomics reveals carboxysome adaptation and mitochondrial proteome in Paulinella chromatophora www.cell.com/current-biol...

ooh Bluesky can do videos now... here's an emergency #cilia movie

The International Society of Protistology is funding community initiatives like workshops and symposia! The deadline is soon (09/30) but the funding will also be available next year :-) Send to anyone that might benefit from this/plz retweet! #ProtistsonSky protistologists.org/call-for-app...

The authors of this justified their approach for "DNA-based taxonomy" in quite a detailed paper (10.1016/j.tig.2025.07.009). It is absolutely ok not to agree this is right way (not sure if I agree), but at least it would be great to criticize this with arguments, not just say "we don't like it"

Håvard Kauserud@drhyfe.bsky.social · last mo.

Why? Why not conduct more proper science? Punk attitude is sometimes fun, but not in science 😟 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Come join team Protist at the Earlham Institute!

Earlham Institute@earlhaminst.bsky.social · last mo.

🆕 Joining a new international project, applications are open for a computational postdoc researcher to work on #protist #genomics. This bioinformatics role focuses on developing and applying novel methods for long-read and #singlecell across a diverse range of protist species.

Just a **few** (aka 25!) more eukaryotic phyla discovered/proposed! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Nice work @tedersoo.bsky.social @vmikk.bsky.social & all

Discovering 25 novel phyla that fill gaps in the eukaryotic tree of life

Protists play important roles in food chains and symbioses in soil and aquatic environments, displaying an enormous morphological and functional diversity[1][1],[2][2]. While most commonly found proti...

biorxiv.org

Ciliary beating in a marine #zooplankton larva recorded in Shimoda together with Kei Jokura in 2024 #silentsunday #cilia #marine

Exciting day for the lab: our 1rst paper is officially out in @currentbiology.bsky.social 🥳 Wonderful collaboration wt @gautamdey.bsky.social showing how Cryo-ExM achieves consistent immunostaining in diverse diatoms, from the lab and the natural environment 1/n #ProtistsOnSky tinyurl.com/2zxaund7

I was late to the party, but it was super fun to contribute to this project. And what a beautiful result. And I got to see my first IRL paulinella, see the dedication and leadership of @couchmicroscopy.bsky.social, and make new friends! Bonus [probably] P. murrayi rolling around while dividing.

Julia Van Etten@couchmicroscopy.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Our paper describing two new photosynthetic Paulinella species is out today in JPhycol! This is the kind of work I love to do and even it though took many years to finish, we had a lot of fun stomping around together in the marsh! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #protistsonsky

A very persistent, tireless cowboy! Very pretty choanoflagellates, imaged today on LLS together with Babette van Amen from @agathechaigne.bsky.social lab.

Our paper describing two new photosynthetic Paulinella species is out today in JPhycol! This is the kind of work I love to do and even it though took many years to finish, we had a lot of fun stomping around together in the marsh! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #protistsonsky

I’m grateful for the chance to present at the EMBL conference “A new view of plankton in the global ocean: celebrating 10 years of Tara Oceans.” Amazing to see the impact Tara has had on plankton research over the past decade! #EMBLPlanktonDiscoveries @EMBLEvents