Jürgen Strassert

Salinity and diatom host community jointly shape chytrid parasite diversity along a natural salinity gradient #diatoms #fungi #eukaryotes #parasites #MicroSky #ProtistsOnSky @isme-microbes.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/isme...

Go and work with my dear former colleagues, Ania and Lilly! You won't regret it!!

When genus deserves to be a family 🦠🔬 Recent phylogenomic analyses showed that the genus Methanobrevibacter is severely underclassified. We propose reclassifying it into a family, Methanobrevibacteraceae consisting of 11 genera. @microbiologysociety.org #MicroSky #Archaea doi.org/10.1099/ijse...

Independent evolutionary events led to the emergence of bacteria and archaea from LUCA - fascinating new paper from Bill Martin’s group www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A novel jakobid genus from the soil of an indoor plant #microbiology #protists #eukaryotes #ProtistsOnSky www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

From MBoC A new localization atlas maps more than 600 Giardia proteins, revealing the locations of hundreds of previously uncharacterized proteins and creating a valuable resource for functional discovery. https://www.molbiolcell.org/doi/10.1091/mbc.E25-12-0590

Plastid endosymbiosis without gene transfer - dinoflagellates can do it #ProtistsOnSky #Kareniaceae #plastids

Nice :-)

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

The evolutionary origins of #streptophyte multicellularity #TansleyReview by Tatyana Darienko, et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @jandevries.bsky.social @caeciliafkunz.bsky.social Summary also available in German. #PlantScience

Check out this stunning public outreach video by the German YouTube channel Kurzgesagt (in English). It covers predator–prey interactions involving #protists. Very happy to have contributed - the visuals are out of this world! #protistsonsky www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf-u...

New preprint: We studied the population dynamics of Arctic #phytoplankton and #mycoplankton and found evidence for chytrid-mediated diatom bloom termination. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Congrats @paulinethome.bsky.social #protists #protistsonsky #algae #diatoms #chytrids

New #ISEPpapers #PrePrint! Single cell #genomics and fluorescence microscopy suggest a permanent plastid in a marine centrohelid www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #Protists #Algae #Microbes #Symbiosis #Evolution #Plastids

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...

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...

If you want to read a cool story today, look no further: A billion-year-old bacterial machinery replicates plastid DNA and supports kleptoplastidy #protistsonsky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Interested in working on the evolution of photosynthetic endosymbioses? Come join us! I have 2 open positions in my new group @cemess.bsky.social in Vienna 3yr postdoc info: tinyurl.com/4emkjpn4 4yr PhD info: tinyurl.com/mtxmsjpy Apply by 1st June! Please share/repost #Protists #Symbiosis #PhD

My lab is currently looking for a postdoc interested in phylogenomics to work with our group on PhyloFisher. Please reach out if you or anyone you know is interested. evol.mcmaster.ca/brian/evoldi...

IQ-TREE 3: Phylogenomic Inference Software using Complex Evolutionary Models academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

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 🦠

🌊 Exciting #PhDPosition in #PlanktonEcology at the University of Koblenz, Germany! Work on marine protists with a mix of 🔬 wet lab and 💻 bioinformatics in a 3-year, 60% position. 📅 Apply by 20 May 2026 Please repost/share 🙌 Link: tinyurl.com/yu27knau #Protists #MicrobialEcology #PhD #Ecology

An ocean-wide partnership: How #diatoms use a sulfated #polysaccharide to keep #bacteria close & friendly. mpi-bremen.de/en/How-diato... Out now #Microbiome by J. Krull @chandnisidhu.bsky.social J.-H. Hehemann C. J. Crawford et al. @marumunibremen.bsky.social @unibremen.bsky.social (C) M. Reich

Our new article on #protist global distributions combining the #Mixoplankton and #metaPR2 databases with newly revised functional annotations. rdcu.be/fanlx

📣 Job opportunity: ERC-funded position as a Five-Year Postdoctoral Researcher (all genders welcome) in @jandevries.bsky.social lab in Göttingen, Germany. Find more info here: www.uni-goettingen.de/de/644546.ht... #plantsci

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.

Single-cell transcriptomics reveals a new marine parasite: Characterization and distribution of Rozellomyces from the Gulf of Alaska ⛴️🔬🌊 Congrats Adarsh and all co-authors: @protistwtmostest.bsky.social, Gordon, @pjkeelinglab.bsky.social, and Naomi! #ProtistsOnSky

Description of the new Marine fungus that kills harmful algae Full article: Algophthora mediterranea, gen. et sp. nov.: Novel dinoflagellate- and diatom-infecting generalist marine chytrid from the Mediterranean Sea share.google/VdemEElvkl7c...

Final version @nature.com of our paper describing unconventional multicellular development in a choanoflagellate inhabiting an extreme environment. A ton of new data since the first @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint (which we've kept updating). A brief 🧵 (carried over from the old place)

I am happy to share the unfinished but nevertheless fascinating autobiography of the late Thomas Cavalier-Smith, written in 2020, shortly before Tom passed away in 2021. I thank Ema Cavalier-Smith for sharing the text with me. I recently finished curating […] [Original post on biologists.social]

Have a novel protist's genome or transcriptome and want to predict it's mitochondrial proteome? Look no further than CoMR, this handy bioinformatic workflow to help you: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #phylogenetics

Closely related microbes tend to live in similar communities across Earth’s environments. We call this pattern community conservatism - extending established ecological patterns to the microbial world. 🧬🌍 #MicrobialEcology #Evolution Read the full article here: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

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...

Kulikov, @ikeririsarri.bsky.social @fonamental.bsky.social et al present a 529.6 Mb chromosome-scale genome for the redlip blenny (scaffold N50 = 23.7 Mb; BUSCO = 97.06%). Annotation identified 18,927 protein-coding genes. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf242 📸 Evan D’Alessandro #genome #evolution

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...

A free, open-access library of high-quality organism illustrations for science communication

New preprint out! Using ~75k environmental OTUs + 77 fossil calibrations, we reconstructed a Proterozoic timeline of eukaryote evolution. Our results show crown eukaryotes were already diversifying >1.6 Ga, long before the first undisputed fossils (~1.05 Ga). 🔗 DOI: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Those interested in performing maximum likelihood phylogenomic analysis on data sets made up of eukaryotic nuclear genes using site heterogeneous mixture models like C60, I suggest you use the ELM model in IQ-TREE instead of the LG model /1

Are you very busy but still want to learn what Aphelids are and why they are important to understand the evolution of Fungi? Then check out our “Quick guide” on Aphelids published in collaboration with @deemteam.bsky.social, Sergey and Guifré. #protistsonsky doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

✨ A study in nature.com from our Faculty at @unikarlova.cuni.cz reveals Solarion arienae, a rare #protist forming a newly identified eukaryotic supersroup Disparia. A unique window into early #eukaryotic cell #evolution. 🌍🔬👏 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are looking for a PhD student to work on an exciting plastid endosymbiosis in microbial eukaryotes. This position involves sampling, exciting microscopy such as CARDFISH, ExM and FIBSEM, single-cell transcriptomics and more. #protistsonsky 1/2

New study shows that oil spills increase the sinking rate of (large) #microplastics, which might partially explain why we find buoyant polymers in deep-sea sediments. #plastic www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

NEW pub in @science.org 🥳 Is it sponges (panels A & B) or comb jellies (C & D) that root the animal tree of life? For over 15 years, #phylogenomic studies have been divided. We provide new evidence suggesting that... 🔗: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

PhD position available at TU Berlin, Dept. of Environmental Microbiomics: Fate of mineral-associated organic matter during transition from terrestrial to aquatic systems stellenticket.tu-berlin.de/en/job-offer...

Phylogenomic analysis of deep-branching telonemid #protistsonsky academic.oup.com/gbe/advance-...

Lab’s first paper is out!! We show the first structures of #Asgard #chromatin by #cryo-EM 🧬❄️ Asgard histones form closed and open hypernucleosomes. Closed are conserved across #Archaea, while open resemble eukaryotic H3–H4 octasomes and are Asgard-specific. More here: www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

New version of PR2 that now includes the eKOI coi database recently published.

Polyploidization in diatoms accelerates adaptation to warming www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs 🌊

🚨 We’re hiring! 🚨 @bruzos.bsky.social lab is seeking a highly motivated #PostDoc & a #PhD student to investigate the marine transmissible cancers. 🧬🌊 #sciencejobs #jobalert #researchjob #cancer #marinescience #symbiosis #bioinformatics #MaxPlanck

Declining ocean greenness and phytoplankton blooms in low to mid-latitudes under a warming climate www.science.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs 🌊

Only two days left to apply for the open tenure track professorship in Computational Biology here in @uni-goettingen.de uni-goettingen.de/en/700631.html