Invited speaker spotlight: Yuji Inagaki, University of Tsukuba “Phylogenomic illusions in the eukaryotic phylogeny” 📅 October 7 🕒 09:00–09:30 Full program: comparativegenomics2026.com #Phylogenomics #Protistology #Protists #ProtistsOnSky #Eukaryotes #Genomics #Microbiology

It's out! Excited to present the Great Barrier Reef Microbial Genomes Database (GBR-MGD), a comprehensive DB of 1000s of high-quality prokaryote, virus, plasmid, and chromosome-level eukaryote MAGs using Nanopore long reads. Subthreads incoming. Please share widely. 🙂 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The planktonic microbiome of the Great Barrier Reef - Nature

The Great Barrier Reef Microbial Genomes Database compiles prokaryotic, viral and eukaryotic genomes from seawater collected from the Great Barrier Reef, providing a rich resource for the study of mar...

nature.com

⏰ The countdown is on! Only 7 days remain to register for CGUE2026. Five days of cutting-edge science, inspiring discussions and networking with the international community studying the evolution and diversity of unicellular eukaryotes. #ComparativeGenomics #Protistology #Protists #Microbiology

Check out the draft program for the Comparative Genomics of Unicellular Eukaryotes meeting! Want to attend? Are you a speaker? Don't wait! Registration is closes on May 4. comparativegenomics2026.com/program/ w/ @cstairs.bsky.social

1/25 New paper out in PNAS! We show that the fitness costs of reproductive specialization, where somatic cells give up reproduction, scale inversely with organism size. Larger organisms can afford far more soma, removing a key barrier to multicellular complexity.

We have just published a short note on archaeal phylogeny: complex mixture models support a deep placement of Methanonatronarchaeia within Euryarchaea and indicate that three recently described groups (Halorutilales, Afararchaeaceae, and Ordosarchaeia) are actually the same. shorturl.at/5GMpU

So you are using IQ-TREE to estimate a tree for "deep time" phylogenetics using amino acid alignments. There is a lot of confusion about how to test model fit. Here are some suggestions.

Today we published a Correction on our 2023 @nature.com paper reporting the heimdallarchaeial ancestry of eukaryotes: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Corrected paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Importantly, the re-analyses of the corrected dataset are consistent with the original findings.

Comparative Genomics of Unicellular Eukaryotes (San Feliu, Spain): Abstract submission is open, with a short deadline! comparativegenomics2026.com Join us as we explore the most diverse, surprising, and still largely uncharted branches of the eukaryotic tree.

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

Divergent Plastid Genomes in the Deepest-Branching Apicomplexan Parasites #protists #protistsonsky academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

Beautiful work!

Roland Hatzenpichler@environmicrobio.bsky.social · last yr.

Preprint🚨 #microsky 🦠 “Cultivation of Methanonezhaarchaeia, the third class of methanogens within the phylum Thermoproteota”, authored by @kohtzarchaeota.bsky.social & Sylvia Nupp, expands the diversity of methanogens! 90% enriched, methylotrophic culture from a hot spring. A 🧵 tinyurl.com/yw8ku2bj

Happy to see our work published and glad to have contributed together with @maxraas.bsky.social ! Looking forward to all the projects that will come out of this work!

Laura Eme@lauraeme.bsky.social · last yr.

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

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

🎉 Now out “Phylogenomic analyses indicate the archaeal superphylum DPANN originated from free‑living euryarchaeal‑like ancestors” www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Phylogenomic analyses indicate the archaeal superphylum DPANN originated from free-living euryarchaeal-like ancestors - Nature Microbiology

Phylogenetic reconstructions with conserved protein markers from the 11 known DPANN phyla reveal their monophyletic placement within the Euryarchaeota.

nature.com

New vacancy in my team! PhD student position on microbial genome evolution, focusing on the evolutionary principles underlying bacterial genome architecture. Please repost and share with talented MSc students in #evobio, bioinformatics or related :) www.uu.nl/en/organisat... #MEvoSky #MicroSky

usccn.org/spotlight-on...

Spotlight on DSMZ: Germany’s Leading Microbial Culture Collection - United States Culture Collection Network

USCCN Project Manager Dusti Gallagher and Steering Committee member Matthew Ryan (CABI) participated in the MICROBE project (The MICRObiome Biobanking (RI) Enabler) 2nd Annual Consortium Meeting held ...

usccn.org

Check out exciting protist research in JEM! Holly Moeller et al. explore the feeding habits of Mesodinium rubrum and provide a tool for studying its cell biology and photophysiology in their open access paper in our March/April issue! doi.org/10.1111/jeu.... #protistsonsky

We must have been super lucky that contamination was all from different lineages to each Njord MAG and yet all from the same clade of unknown Asgard so that Njord form monophyletic groups within Asgards in individual gene trees.

I'm pleased to introduce our new paper rooting the eukaryote Tree of Life (eToL) that resulted from a collaboration led by PhD student Kelsey Williamson and a large group of collaborators doi.org/10.1038/s415...htt

A robustly rooted tree of eukaryotes reveals their excavate ancestry - Nature

The root of the eukaryote Tree of Life is estimated from a new, larger dataset of mitochondrial proteins including all known eukaryotic supergroups, showing it lies between two multi-supergroup assemb...

doi.org

🚨 New paper alert! 🚨 A robustly rooted tree of eukaryotes sheds light on their deep evolutionary ancestry—suggesting that the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA) may have had an excavate-like cell architecture. 🧵🔬 (1/) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A robustly rooted tree of eukaryotes reveals their excavate ancestry - Nature

The root of the eukaryote Tree of Life is estimated from a new, larger dataset of mitochondrial proteins including all known eukaryotic supergroups, showing it lies between two multi-supergroup assemb...

nature.com

🧬🧪🦠🧫 @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @rkoszul.bsky.social @leameneu.bsky.social @christophechapard.bsky.social @chromozz.bsky.social @pasteur.fr @sorbonne-universite.fr @institutcurie.bsky.social + PS www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.... @gfudenberg.bsky.social @vram142.bsky.social

Romain Koszul@rkoszul.bsky.social · last yr.

Our latest work: how can compartmentalization emerge in a eukaryotic genome lacking canonical heterochromatin? By investigating bacterial genomes put in yeast, we show that the presence or absence of transcription is sufficient! #chromatin #3Dgenome #generegulation www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 👇

Would you expect that Bacteria use an archaellum for swimming? We didn't, but we found that some Chloroflexota do! Find the story here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A little thread below 1/n

Horizontal gene transfer of the functional archaellum machinery to Bacteria

Motility in Archaea is driven by a nanomachinery called the archaellum. So far, archaella have been exclusively described for the archaeal domain; however, a recent study reported the presence of arch...

biorxiv.org

Dear US scientists, We've been hearing a lot of questions of the form "Why aren't universities doing anything!? They need to speak out!" We can explain. It's bad news. We're on our own. But understanding why can help us all figure out our plan. Read along in thread 1/x 🧪

Fun little Q&A! Thank you for the opportunity Current Biology @currentbiology.bsky.social www.cell.com/current-biol...

[RDV 16h !] #LUCA, le dernier ancêtre commun à tous les êtres vivants. De quelle nature est-il ? A quand peut-on le dater et comment ? Quel a été son impact sur son environnement ? tinyurl.com/25jhs4pa avec Guillaume Lecointre et Purificacion Lopez Garcia

NEW preprint!🥳 Orthogroups are a prerequisite for comparative genomics and Tree of Life inquiries Introducing #OrthoHMM, software that improves the inference of orthogroups (blue in fig) OrthoHMM may refine our understanding of genome evolution and the Tree of Life 🔗 tinyurl.com/4s9mwxz6 🧵 1/8

📢Call for Papers!📢 Applied and Environmental Microbiology is actively seeking submissions on the topic Anaerobic Microbiology. We welcome reviews and new research insights into strict and facultative anaerobes (archaea, bacteria, eukarya, viruses). Learn more: journals.asm.org/journal/aem/...

Anaerobic Microbiology

Applied and Environmental Microbiology (AEM) seeks research articles and minireviews on the topic anaerobic microbiology.

journals.asm.org

Please share! Applications due Dec 15th for a starting date in Sep 2025.

Laura Eme@lauraeme.bsky.social · 2y ago

Fully Funded PhD Opportunity in Evolutionary Biology at the U of Rhode Island. Join us to explore the origin and early evolution of eukaryotes using cutting-edge comparative (meta)genomics and molecular evolution approaches. Applications are due December 15th. Contact me ASAP at laura.eme@uri.edu

Understanding the origin of eukaryotic cells is one of the biggest puzzles in biology 🧩 As genomic data expand, painting a clear picture of LECA requires analytical resources and a commitment to data sharing. This paper led by T. R. emphasizes a community-driven approach to tackle this complexity.

Roli Roberts@roliroberts.bsky.social · 2y ago

What did the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (#LECA) look like? Consensus View in #PLOSBiology; massive authorship including @AncestralState, @lauraeme.bsky.social, John Archbald, @andrewjroger.bsky.social, @dackslabecb.bsky.social, Jeremy Wideman. plos.io/4g0alq4