Iain Johnston

1. The thing about science that these jokers don't understand is that science cannot be vibe-coded.

Whatever its flaws, the point with vibe coding is that you're trying to quickly make something that sorta works, where you can immediately sorta see if it sorta works and then sorta use it.

Check out our latest Special Section guest edited by @mitopozzi.bsky.social and Sophie Breton:

Beyond ATP: New insight into mitochondrial function and evolution

🎨 Cover image - artwork by Iain G Johnston

academic.oup.com/jeb/pages/be...

Local mitochondrial physiology defined by mtDNA quality guides purifying selection Author summary Mitochondria are essential organelles in our cells that convert nutrients into usable cellular energy. They contain their own DNA, and mutations in this DNA can compromise mitochondrial...

How do cells assess mtDNA quality?

Local ATP and membrane-potential gradients reflect mtDNA integrity and drive intracellular purifying selection.

We introduce FAST, a scalable mtDNA QC assay in S. cerevisiae.

Great collaboration with the Schmoller Lab.

journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...
🧬⚡

Book front cover with illustrations of fern leaves and the title: Ferns, lessons in survival from Earth’s most adaptable plants Written by: Fat-Wei Li and Jacob S. Suissa Illustrated by Laura Silburn

Looking for a new 📕 to read about plants??
I highly recommend the brilliant book ‘Ferns, Lessons in survival from Earth’s most adaptable plants’
Written by @fernway.bsky.social and Jacob Suissa with amazing illustrations by Laura Silburn
🌿 #FernFriday 🌿

1. Apply for one of the positions below (lab or theory) by Jan 18th
2. Learn interdisc skills and discover cool new things about how mitochondria move and socialise
3. Explore some of Norway's beautiful nature (both the below, Rundemanen and Gullfjellet, <10km from work)

2026 ❤️ 🇳🇴

‼️Two new PhD positions open! One experimental, one modelling, exploring these beautiful collective dynamics in mitochondria across species. 🇳🇴, good pay, full staff benefits. [Shares much appreciated]
Lab: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...
Modelling: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Thrilled to see our review article "The evolutionary origins of synaptic proteins" highlighted on the cover of Nature Reviews Neuroscience 🤩.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@msarscentre.bsky.social 🧠✨🧬🌊🪼🧽

Mitochondria, hypercubes, and a blackboard -- what a lot of favourite things for J Evol Biol this month! Thanks to all involved for a smooth and pleasant review editorial process; academic.oup.com/jeb/article/...

Ski season!

Paradise up on the mountain trails

We have wondered what a complex archaeal cell might look like ever since 2014. It’s been a long road (and the journey is far from over), but it’s a good time to pause for breath and look. These Asgard archaeal cells are a surprise! And that is the joy of being a cell biologist.

Convergent pathways of reductive mitochondrial evolution characterized with hypercubic inference Abstract. For a striking example of mitochondrial behaviour beyond adenosine triphosphate (ATP) generation, consider mitochondrion-related organelles (MROs

In some species, #mitochondria have lost functions: from specific complexes to the ability to produce #ATP (and more!). We examine the evolutionary pathways of this reduction, from yeast and mistletoe to parasite "MROs":

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

@mitomaths.bsky.social et al. 2025

Global diversity, predictors, and predictions of AMR evolutionary pathways in Klebsiella pneumoniae Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a substantial and growing global health burden. Understanding, and predicting, its evolution in specific pathogens will help responses across scales from individual p...

Would love to hear any feedback; we continue to believe that EvAM applied to AMR (learning evolutionary history) can be a powerful complement to genomic surveys (focussing on the present). Thanks for reading!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
5/5

Understanding evolutionary dynamics lets us form future predictions. We tested these predictions with newly sequenced data from decades of clinical study in Tanzania. Fitted model retrospectively predicted those previously unobserved accumulation dynamics! 4/

Interesting, but very high-dimensional, so we project down to find the principal axes of diversity in evolutionary behaviour -- and what predicts them. They're linked both to public health region and drug use regimens 3/

Following the ideas in journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.... about applying evol accumulation modelling (EvAM) to AMR, we use genomics data to infer the orderings of character accumulation behind observed Klebsiella AMR profiles across countries (e.g. Romania here), with global average in D 2/

Great to see this out there! We infer the evolutionary pathways behind patterns of AMR in Klebsiella across 102 states, finding globally consistent principles, state-specific deviations (and covariates), and validating evol predictions with new genomes. biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/

Recruitment of Talented Researchers to Norway The Research Council supports the recruitment of talented international researchers to the Research Council's centre calls and for projects funded ...

There'll be 2 PhD positions (math / microscopy) on MitoPhyto. But the Norwegian research council is also offering opportunities for non-European postdocs to come to Norway for 3 years associated with FRIPRO projects. Please DM me if interested!
www.forskningsradet.no/en/call-for-...

Celebrating grant award with a mountain run! MitoPhyto, a FRIPRO project, will combine modelling and microscopy to explore mitochondrial and mtDNA maintenance across non-bilaterian multicellular eukaryotes. Opportunities to come to Norway: please see next post

Gratulerer med dagen alle sammen!
(non-Norway-based folks, happy Norwegian Constitution Day!)

Cytoplasmic Inheritance: The Transmission of Plastid and Mitochondrial Genomes Across Cells and Generations Abstract. In photosynthetic organisms, genetic material is stored in the nucleus and the two cytoplasmic organelles: plastids and mitochondria. While both

Glad to share this review, which takes a narrative approach to explore mechanisms governing cytoplasmic inheritance. It highlights exciting advances in the field, while also pointing to the many open questions that remain. Have a read here: doi.org/10.1093/plph...

Had a brilliant time at the 54th Jírovec’s Protozoological Days in Frymburk. Amazing organisms, amazing science, lots of exciting organelle work. Beautiful setting too! Thanks to all www.chromera.org/konference/5...

May trails on the way to the final Applied Statistics lecture of the semester!

View from the office as summer approaches

Exciting permanent(!) #JobAlert for a #botanist to work in Bergen, Norway 🧪

PhD required, language proficiency required within two years. Apply by 25 April.

#Ecology #Restoration #Botany

Angomonas deanei with flourescent-labeled nucleus and endosymbiont. ETP9 localizes at the endosymbiont division site.

Out today: Exciting intermediate between endosymbiont and organelle identified! Endosymbionts in Angomonas deanei lost nearly all bacterial cell division genes. Instead, we identified a host-encoded protein, ETP9, that became specialized for endosymbiont division. 1/2
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Projector broke today, so a good old-school blackboard lecture on an intro to GLMs!

Watching the US take a wrecking ball to science 💔 🤯

Reminder of the importance of doing science in the open. Put data, software, resources in public domain, where no single govt can erase them. This is our collective knowledge. Distributed data systems are essential.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cryptic mitochondrial DNA mutations coincide with mid-late life and are pathophysiologically informative in single cells across tissues and species - Nature Communications Mitochondrial dysfunction is implicated in ageing. Here the authors report that across tissues and species, somatic mitochondrial DNA mutations in single cells (termed cryptic mutations) accumulate wi...

Great to see this out in final form! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Continuous buildup of single-cell-specific mtDNA mutations throughout ageing, and their links with health. Mitos, scRNA, scATAC, models, ER, neuro... a smorgasbord of science! Congrats all! @syssig.bsky.social