Jelena Godrijan 🫧❾🌊🦋

John, where is it? This has been keeping me awake for a week!

They’re smaller than dust, but crucial for Earth’s climate Coccolithophores, tiny planktonic architects of Earth’s climate, capture carbon, produce oxygen, and leave behind geological records that chronicle our planet’s history. European scientists are unitin...

They’re smaller than dust, but crucial for Earth’s climate

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...

Massive undertaking with @teppo-h.bsky.social and others out. We studied 4 years (!!!) of synthetic 23 microbial species community evolution with/without antibiotic. Resistance mutations occurring over years led to stepwise restructuring and ultimately recovery of undisturbed community composition.

Tiny architects, titanic climate impact: scientists call for October 10 to become International Coccolithophore Day Microscopic organisms that regulate Earth’s climate and sustain ocean ecosystems take centre stage in a new awareness campaign. Five European research organisations propose 10 October as Interna...

www.eurekalert.org/news-release... more about this call to action!
#CoccolithophoreDay #OceanClimate #InvisibleHeroes #OceanGuardians #ClimateWarriors #protistsonsky

🌊 Today, Oct 10 = the first International Coccolithophore Day!
These microscopic algae build calcium shells, fuel ocean life, and regulate Earth’s carbon.
Let’s give them the recognition they deserve!
#CoccolithophoreDay #MarineScience

🌍💙 Happy International Coccolithophore Day! 💙🌍
Today, Oct 10, we celebrate tiny ocean builders that capture CO₂, shape marine ecosystems & keep our climate in balance.
When Cocco talks, climate walks.
#CoccolithophoreDay #OceanClimate #InvisibleHeroes #OceanGuardians #ClimateWarriors #protistsonsky

Why Is This Lake ‘Burping’?

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/n...

I know… it’s like waiting for the Eurovision votes — but with more plankton and less glitter 🗳️🌊✨

Microscopic, yet seen from space. Invisible, yet astronauts watch them glow.

Billions of tiny artists shape climate, feed the seas, and write history in calcium armor.

Meet them in 2 days.
#InvisibleHeroes #OceanGuardians #ClimateWarriors #protistsonsky
Illustrations: Rosie Sheward

They are architects of the sea, engineers of the air—capturing carbon, atom by atom.

While you breathe, they build. While you sleep, they safeguard our climate.

#InvisibleHeroes #OceanGuardians #ClimateWarriors #protistsonsky
Illustrations by Rosie Sheward

metaPR2 version 3.0 has just been released.

Here are the major changes:
- Metabarcodes (ASVs) are now annotated with the latest version of the PR2 reference sequence database (5.1.0).
- 8 new published datasets have been added from the Arctic and from the South West Pacific.

app.metapr2.org

🪸🧪 We’re hiring! Join our ERC-funded group at the @hifmb.de in Oldenburg, Germany to explore the cellular origins of photosymbiosis:⁣
⁣
𝟏 𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐝𝐨𝐜 + 𝟐 𝐏𝐡𝐃𝐬 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬.⁣
Deadlines: Oct 29 & Nov 5. Links below. ⁣

Questions: nils.raedecker@hifmb.de⁣
#Photosymbiosis #HIFMB #ERC #AcademicJobs

Top: Micrographs showing hyphal filaments extending from colony peripheries in a sexual cross between CBS8507 and CBS10435 after 2 weeks of incubation on CMA and V8 pH 5 media, in the dark, at room temperature. Insets depict two types of basidia: globose (a–c) and lageniform (b–d). Black arrows indicate clusters of cells emerging near basidia (either at the surface or embedded), scored as potential meiotic progeny (basidiospores). Bottom: Schematic representation of key chromosomal rearrangements and evolutionary events underlying transitions from tetrapolar to bipolar and pseudobipolar mating configurations. The phylogenetic tree highlights inferred changes in MAT locus structure, with color-coded branches representing both extant and reconstructed MAT configurations. Dashed lines indicate unresolved phylogenetic relationships among clades A, B, and C. Insets summarize distinct evolutionary stages, including: the ancestral organization with unlinked and compact P/R and HD loci (1); small-scale expansion of the P/R locus in Kwoniella (2); two independent large-scale expansions of the P/R locus in Cryptococcus (5); relocation of P/R and HD loci onto the same chromosome in Kwoniella resulting in either pseudobipolar (3) or fused (4) MAT configurations; and independent HD-P/R fusion events with HD gene loss in Cryptococcus pathogens and Cryptococcus sp. 3 (6). These transitions illustrate the diverse pathways by which chromosomal rearrangements (CRs) have shaped MAT locus architecture in these fungal lineages.

Evolution of fungal mating systems: Study of #Cryptococcus & Kwoniella by @marcoacoelho.bsky.social @marciadavidpalma.bsky.social &co shows that MAT locus fusions & recombination suppression drive diversity of #SexualReproduction in #fungi @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/479579M

In a world visible only under a microscope, a story unfolds that's changing our planet.

Like grains of sand that build beaches, these microscopic organisms are constructing something far greater.

Follow us and reveal the secret heroes.

Illustrations by Rosie Sheward.

🌊🔬 Looking for a postdoc to join our team!
Cocco-Channel project ➡️ studying coccolithophore phycospheres and their role in ocean carbon cycling.
✔️ Plus if you bring experience in microbial ecology, molecular/microscopy tools & fieldwork
👉 More info: euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/375178
#protistsonsky

Latest from ours: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

This is two stories in one: a case study/cautionary tale on developing genetic tools in new organisms, and the first hint at a gene regulatory network for choanoflagellate multicellular development (which turn out to involve a Hippo/YAP/ECM loop!) A 🧵

Indeed! Congrats to the authors!

Bringing the uncultivated microbial majority of freshwater ecosystems into culture - Nature Communications A large fraction of aquatic bacteria remains uncultured. Here, the authors cultivated 627 strains of abundant freshwater bacteria from 14 European lakes, thus generating a collection that includes many previously uncultured, oligotrophic bacteria that may serve as model organisms.

⚠️New paper ➡️ isolating >600 freshwater microbes using dilution-to-extinction and low-nutrient, lake-mimicking media.

🤯Expands cultured diversity to ~70 % of detected genera and enables physiological studies of streamlined oligotrophs.

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#protistsonsky

Oh! Secretarial support on a daily basis, gosh that would be a dream come true! 😍

If you’re applying to your dream lab for an internship/PhD/postdoc, always send a second email 1-2 weeks after the first one if you don’t hear back.

I promise we will be grateful rather than annoyed. My email inbox is a disaster and I’m quite junior - and very few of us have secretarial support

In a world visible only under a microscope, a story unfolds that's changing our planet. 🌊

#InvisibleHeroes #OceanGuardians #ClimateWarriors #protistsonsky

1 O'clock?

🌊🔬 Looking for a postdoc to join our team!
Cocco-Channel project ➡️ studying coccolithophore phycospheres and their role in ocean carbon cycling.
✔️ Plus if you bring experience in microbial ecology, molecular/microscopy tools & fieldwork
👉 More info: euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/375178
#protistsonsky

Genome-resolved biogeography of Phaeocystales, cosmopolitan bloom-forming algae Nature Communications - Phaeocystales are ecologically significant nanoplankton whose evolutionary history and functional diversity remain incompletely characterized. Here, the authors integrate...

Study reveals the hidden genomic diversity & global distribution of Phaeocystales — bloom-forming algae with surprising mixotrophic strategies, viral integrations, & adaption to polar vs temperate zones. #protistsonsky
Big step forward for marine ecology & biogeochemical models. 🧬🌊
📖 rdcu.be/eI4nv

Effect of cellular nutrient economy on the evolution of genome size in phytoplankton www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #jcampubs

The cellular mechanics of symbiosis: sensing friend from foe

Dear all, registration for the upcoming EMBO/EMBL Symposium on "the cellular mechanics of symbiosis" is now OPEN 🤩 ! Feel free to register ! www.embl.org/about/info/c...
#EESSymbiosis #ProtistsOnSky #SymbioSky
@hassansalem.bsky.social @berasymbionts.bsky.social @embl.org

Do trophic strategies shape biogeography and environmental niches? Marine dinoflagellates as a case study academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a... #jcampubs

The morphology of notable coccolithophore species. The Scanning Electron Microscopy images are coloured by the ratio between the cellular organic and inorganic carbon (CIC:COC) contents.

New preprint 🌊🫶
"A diverse community constitutes global coccolithophore calcium carbonate stocks"
Three large coccolithophores together hold about half of the global CaCO₃ stock!
G. huxleyi <10%
➡️ climate models need to include this broader diversity!
📄 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
#protistsonsky

A rare and exceptional opportunity at the laboratory - we're looking for a new Head of Group for Marine Processes and Observations. Join us at the forefront of tackling the ocean’s greatest challenges: biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate change. Find out more & apply: pml.ac.uk/working-with...

Structure and function of a huge photosystem I–fucoxanthin chlorophyll supercomplex from a coccolithophore Photosystem I (PSI) is a pigment-protein complex, which converts light energy into chemical energy in photosynthesis. Among photosynthetic organisms, PSI-LHC (light-harvesting complex) structures exhi...

Structure and function of a huge photosystem I–fucoxanthin chlorophyll supercomplex from a coccolithophore | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... - don't like it when they are not open access 🥜