Jürgen Strassert

@strassert.bsky.social

interested in microbial eukaryotes; #protists #chytrids https://www.tu.berlin/en/umbio/research/working-groups/group-strassert

Pop Goes the Water Bear: I've written a post about Sorochytrium milnesiophthora - a chytrid fungus that infects tardigrades, and how their water bear-slaying might actually be helping other microscopic animals that live on the surface of lichens. 🧪 dailyparasite.blogspot.com/2026/05/soro...

<i>Sorochytrium milnesiophthora</i>

Tardigrades (also known as "water bears") have built up a reputation for being pretty much invulnerable  (even though Bdelloid rotifers does...

dailyparasite.blogspot.com

And now it's out! Happy that PNAS selected for the cover this SEM image snapped by @samjlord.bsky.social, one of the most evocative visualizations of Euplotes that I have ever encountered. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Stay tuned for what is shaping up to be some fascinating follow-up in the lab...

Scanning electron microscopy image of the ciliate Euplotes gigatrox on the cover of the journal PNAS. Distinct punk rock vibes
Ben Larson@blarson.bsky.social · 11mo ago

What could be more exciting than watching Euplotes scurry around under the microscope? How about adding some raptorial predation by supergiant cannibal cells? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Video by Vittorio Boscaro. 1/n

Really excited to share our new paper from @ibe-warszawa.bsky.social protist team! 🎉 We dive into protist symbioses and show how these interactions shape ecosystems and have played a key role in the evolution of eukaryotes 🦠

ISEP@isepprotists.bsky.social · 4mo ago

New #ISEPpapers by @ankarn.bsky.social et al.! Living together: evolutionary and ecological dimensions of #protist endosymbiosis academic.oup.com/microlife/ar... #Protists #Microbes #Symbiosis #Evolution

illustration of five different microbial cells and some of the chemicals they exchange with their environment

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.

I have a postdoc position in metagenomic exploration available in my group. Candidates with documented experience in phylo & metagenomics and preferably with petabase-scale data mining and GLM workflows are encouraged to apply. Come join us! 🧬🦠💻 Please repost Apply here: www.wur.nl/en/vacancy/p...

Postdoctoral researcher Phylogenomics and metagenomics

Are you just as excited as we are about the fascinating world of microorganisms? Do you want to contribute to exploring and genomically characterize novel prokaryotic lineages? Do you have a PhD degre...

wur.nl

Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺@ettema.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Come join us! Soon I will be advertising a postdoc vacancy in my group as part of my @erc.europa.eu AdG project 'DARK ROOTS'. Focus of the project will be on phylo- and metagenomic mining of novel prokaryotic lineages. I will soon post a link here - stay tuned, and please repost! #asgardarchaea

Just on time for the holidays! Happy to share the published version of the discovery of leptophytes, a new deep-branching and widespread group of microalgae based on plastid MAGs (ptMAGs). Now with additional support from a mitochondrial MAG (mtMAG) of leptophytes. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Identification of a deep-branching lineage of algae using environmental plastid genomes - Nature Communications

Here, the authors leverage data from the Tara Oceans expeditions to perform a phylogeny-guided plastid genome-resolved metagenomic survey and provide 660 non-redundant plastid genomes from marine alga...

nature.com