Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺

Phylogenetic reconciliation supports a methanogenic ancestor of the Archaea and a derived origin for host-associated lineages The phylogeny of the Archaea continues to be revisited and revised as new groups are discovered and phylogenetic methods improve, but key questions about their early evolution remain. It has been sugg...

#Archaea, #DPANN, #phylogenetic_reconciliation
New preprint online!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Congrats Jacob, a-awesome work!

Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting

I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:

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

Yesterday it was 20 years since I defended my PhD thesis!

I have struggled my way through the academic system, with times when I was about to give up due to lack of funding and support.

I am proud where I am now, and what I have achieved. Thanks to everyone who supported me and believed in me!

Picture of MEME students on the beach

Do you want to do a Masters in Evolutionary Biology? The call for applying to the MEME program is now open! MEME is a fantastic 2-year MSc between four European Universities on all areas of Evolutionary Biology. Apply and study in Sweden/France/the Netherlands/Germany/USA/Switzerland! www.evobio.eu

a man in a suit is holding a jacket and a cigarette . ALT: a man in a suit is holding a jacket and a cigarette .

Interesting how companies and the financial world is racing to spend mindboggling amounts of money to build the infrastructure to train computers. But we are leaving the infrastructure to train and educate humans crumbling. The question is who will train who?

michael scott from the office is wearing a suit and tie and making a funny face . ALT: michael scott from the office is wearing a suit and tie and making a funny face .

OK, somebody should say it: the term 'one-stop-shop' has no place in academic research. Due to their diverse and exploratory nature, there is no single solution for scientific projects - else this would be routine research. RT if you agree, or feel free to argue otherwise below.

Happy to share that our story on the bacterial archaellum was published today in @natmicrobiol.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congrats to the authors: @sshamphavi.bsky.social @loumollat.bsky.social @mariejoest.bsky.social Najwa Taib and @sgribaldo.bsky.social

The Escherichia coli replication initiator DnaA is titrated on the chromosome - Nature Communications A DNA-binding protein, DnaA, regulates the initiation of chromosomal replication in bacteria. Here, Olivi et al. show that the bacterial chromosome sequesters DnaA in a growth rate-dependent manner, s...

🧵 Our study on the elusive titration control mechanism of the replication initiator DnaA in Escherichia coli is now out on @natcomms.nature.com‬! @stephkoe.bsky.social
@hohlbeinlab.bsky.social‬ @nicoc-micsynmet.bsky.social @ettema.bsky.social‬ @mib-wur.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Saddened to learn of the passing of Moselio "Elio" Schaechter—Distinguished Professor at Tufts, SDSU and UCSD—humanist and visionary leader in the fields of microbiology and scientific communication—mentor, friend, and inspiration to me and so many others

Small Things Considered
Big Things Achieved

📣 ELIXIR has published a position paper on the importance of #OpenData infrastructure for 🌍 European competitiveness in life sciences.
Read the news 👉 https://loom.ly/22XW72k

#ResearchInfrastructure #Science4EU

8.
GTDB r220 case study (led by @kassipan.bsky.social )
Applied WitChi to the archaeal GTDB r220 supermatrix:
• 5,869 taxa
• 55% of columns pruned
• Biased taxa: 95.1% → 2.3%
• Runtime: <2h on 4 cores
→ Known clades recovered — without using very complex C60 or CAT models

Our latest work, driven by the fabulous @stephkoe.bsky.social! WitChi takes care of compositional bias in large phylogenomic datasets! WitChi is fast, efficient and free, try it out!

With @kassipan.bsky.social and @danieltamarit.bsky.social

Logo for the Sandpiper website

Out in @natbiotech.nature.com: Metagenome taxonomy profilers usually ignore unknown species. SingleM is an accurate profiler which doesn't, even detecting phyla with no MAGs. Profiles of 700,000 metagenomes at sandpiper.qut.edu.au. A 🧵

Phylogenomic analyses reveal that Panguiarchaeum is a clade of genome-reduced Asgard archaea within the Njordarchaeia The Asgard archaea are a diverse archaeal phylum important for our understanding of cellular evolution because they include the lineage that gave rise to eukaryotes. Recent phylogenomic work has focus...

#Asgard,#phylogeny
1/ 🧵 Does MAGs contamination affect the placement of Njord as suggested by Zhang et al, 2025? www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Our updated analysis suggests instead... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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

haha, says he who uprooted microbial taxonomy ;-)

Complex archaea that bridge the gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes - Nature This study identifies a clade of archaea that is the immediate sister group of eukaryotes in phylogenetic analyses, and that also has a repertoire of proteins otherwise characteristic of eukaryotes—pr...

On this day, 10 years ago, my lab published the @nature.com paper reporting the discovery of the Asgard archaea (Lokiarchaeota at the time), revealing the archaeal nature of eukaryotic cells, and reshaping the Tree of Life. What a ride it has been since then... www.nature.com/articles/nat...

Loki’s ever the trickster, but thankfully Thor knows how to put him in his place

#ArchaeaSky #Asgard #comics #comedy

LoVis4u: a locus visualization tool for comparative genomics and coverage profiles Abstract. Comparative genomic analysis often involves visualization of alignments of genomic loci. While several software tools are available for this task

Excited to share that our paper on locus visualisation tool LoVis4u is out! Entirely driven by fantastic PhD student Artyom Egorov @egorov.bsky.social academic.oup.com/nargab/artic...

Phylogenomic analyses reveal that Panguiarchaeum is a clade of genome-reduced Asgard archaea The Asgard archaea are a diverse archaeal phylum that includes the host lineage from which eukaryotes evolved. Due to the importance of the Asgard archaea for our understanding of cellular evolution a...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A new collaborative paper with Anja Spang, Wen-Cong Huang, @chrisrinke.bsky.social @ettema.bsky.social @ssolo.bsky.social Zheng-Shuang Hua Maraike Probst and Lenard Szantho. We investigated the phylogenetic position and metabolic evolution of Panguiarchaeum.

Hello Bluesky!

Follow us for updates on our Microbiology research here @w-u-r.bsky.social

A unique symbiosome in an anaerobic single-celled eukaryote - Nature Communications Symbiont-housing structures are well-studied in multicellular eukaryotes but rarely in unicellular protists. This study shows that low-oxygen-adapted&nbsp;Anaeramoebae have symbiosomes positioning sul...

In case some people have missed it, I'm re-posting a link to our paper on the Anaeramoeba-Desulfobacter symbiotic system. This is one of the papers from my lab that I'm most proud of...and a huge amount of the credit goes to @jonhultqvist.bsky.social !!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Nice, you give true meaning to being a rockstar scientist! 🤘

Delighted to share our new preprint on the cell biology and genome of Stentor pyriformis, a giant ciliate that maintains Chlorella endosymbionts in surface-associated microtubule baskets.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Congrats Puri!

Jeepers! Congrats... I guess? 😉

Confronting risks of mirror life Broad discussion is needed to chart a path forward.

With today's report outlining risks on mirror life www.science.org/doi/full/10.... many have asked:

Could mirror life survive in the wild?

Yes. While mirror life in the wild could have some significant disadvantages (like finding food it can digest), they do not appear to be insurmountable: 🧵

We have an opening for a 4 yr PhD interested in membrane remodelling and cryo-EM/ET of a minimal cell division machinery: edu.nl/bukan

You will be part of the EVOLF consortium in which 30 leading biochemists/biophysicists work together to explore if and how we can build autonomous synthetic cells.