Vasily Zlatogursky

crTP X-ray structure

✨X-ray crystallography reveals surprising twist in how proteins enter the unique photosynthetic organelles of Paulinella. The chromatophore targeting peptide (crTP) folds into a 3D structure, hinting that folded proteins cross peptidoglycan and inner membrane. (1/2)
academic.oup.com/plphys/artic...

Absolutely stunning FIB-SEM, and a very cool story.
Perfect timing for the endosymbiosis portion of my Evo Cell Bio course where we just covered a paper on Paulinella...

Biological Laboratory | LEGO® Ideas This is a two-floor realistic Biological Laboratory building. In this design, I try to tell stories about biologists, introduce biology concepts to general publ…

I just made an account and voted for this biology laboratory made of LEGO to "promote biological research and inspire more people into the world of biology". They need 10K votes. Reposting and/or voting below would be helpful. 🤗
beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

Single-cell sequencing reveals unexpected genetic diversity among Bodo spp. flagellates and their bacterial endosymbionts Bodo is a cosmopolitan genus of free living bacterivorous single-celled flagellates in the class Kinetoplastea. Members of genus Bodo are considered the closest free-living relatives to the parasitic ...

A new preprint from us using a single-cell genome pipeline to investigate diversity of uncultured Bodo spp. flagellates.

We isolated 7 Bodo spp. cells from a single environmental sample and show that they represent 3 Bodo sp. each with a unique species of bacterial endosymbiont. #protistsonsky

Cell size matters: a unifying theory across the tree of life www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How to upgrade stolen organelles into permanent plastids: A comparative transcriptomic perspective | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... #protistsonsky

Wiley set to earn $44m from AI rights deals, confirms “no opt-out" for authors The US publisher is the latest to capitalise on deals to give tech firms access to its authors’ content to train their Large Language Models (LLMs).

Everybody makes money out of academic authors except the authors...News.

Wiley is the latest academic publisher to reach a multi-million deal to allow access to its content to AI developers, with no opt out, let alone payment, for the authors who created that content.

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 🧵

🌊 Happy to share our recent study on phytoplankton dynamics! We found that communities can shift dramatically in just a few days - driven by grazers like Cladocera and environmental factors such as silica concentration and wind speed.
t.co/PaL0QcofrV

quite scared one! If you give quiet time it will show its "ears" :)

👍

From MBoC: Wallace F. Marshall (UCSF) and team profile the giant ciliate Stentor pyriformis—symbiotic algae in microtubule baskets, symbiont-dependent phototaxis, and a standard genetic code. Paper: www.molbiolcell.org/doi/10.1091/... #CellBiology

mmmm, among other things I appreciate a fare representation of #centrohelids 😍

Again I am years behind: I have only recently noticed that critical information such as equal-contribution authorship is lost in important platforms such as PubMed, Google Scholar, ORCID...

Fairness is critical to every one. Why nothing has been done to correct this?

Something needs to be done!

Some little circus performers. #protistsonsky

If, unlike me you are a member Linnean Society and like me a fun of #Protistsonsky, consider nominating two amazing amateur protist naturalists: Ferry Siemensma (arcella.nl) and Eckhard Voelcker (penard.de), their contribution is outstanding!

Excited to share our third heterotrophic #Paulinella culture from Haida Gwaii, Canada! :)

#ProtistsOnSky

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 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

In another exciting development our new preprint is online:
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

This is the work of my brilliant graduate student Katerina Kourkoulou in collaboration with Maggie Liu and Arnold Mathijssen. Here is a video of the subject of our study:

Our 2nd heterotrophic #Paulinella culture!
Really proud of this one. After days at the microscope picking cells, I finally got it growing happily :)

#protistsonsky

Environment-dependent mutualism–parasitism transitions in the incipient symbiosis between Tetrahymena utriculariae and Micractinium tetrahymenae Abstract. Mutualistic endosymbiosis is a cornerstone of evolutionary innovation, enabling organisms to exploit diverse niches unavailable to individual spe

Environment-dependent mutualism–parasitism transitions in the incipient symbiosis between Tetrahymena utriculariae and Micractinium tetrahymenae

From Mostafa et al

Flagellar gliding in choanoflagellates Freire-Delgado and Brunet discover a new mode of cell motility in choanoflagellates, the closest relatives of animals. Under mild confinement, choanoflagellate move over surfaces without cell deformat...

New short paper from our lab @currentbiology.bsky.social, in which we discover of a new mode of cell motility for choanoflagellates: flagellar gliding. www.cell.com/current-biol... - A 🧵

Did you know tiny algae can "skate" within Arctic sea ice? ⛸️ Our new study in @pnas.org reveals the secret life of ice diatoms: they are actively gliding to navigate the ice! This adds a new dimension to the sea ice ecosystem, revealing an active, dynamic ecological niche. @prakashlab.bsky.social

What you're looking at is a brand new protist species! 🤯🔬
Isn't it beautiful?
This image is just a glimpse of what's to come. We can't wait to share our full findings soon, in partnership with Guifré @beaplab.bsky.social @luisjagago.bsky.social. Stay tuned! #NewSpecies #protistsonSky #diversity

Either scenario is possible, as well as a combination of both to some degree, anyway, thanks for the links, very interesting!

Yes I agree, but the small size reinforces the snail-pecking scenario, since the bigger object has more chances to attract the bird. But anyway, this is fortune-telling, it needs to be confirmed, actually the whole situation seems to be suitable for lab experiment.

Did anyone try? What would be an alternative explanation to bird-pecking hypthesis? I definitely saw the detached eyestalks with Leucochloridium, but there were no birds around 🙄

Check out our new paper on adopting a trait-based framework for protist diversity! We make the case for a unified protist trait database, how to build it, and how it could transform research on protist ecology and evolution.
#protistsonsky

How do microbes become permanent partners? 🌊🔬🦠 Check out our new study published in Current Biology showing how cyanobacterial genomes evolve step-by-step into endosymbionts of diatoms. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
@currentbiology.bsky.social @mehrshmali.bsky.social