Iain Johnston

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

Started likelihood-based approaches for model selection in STAT200 today, one of my favourite things (and behind many of our research projects)! Combined with likelihood-free methods, my claim is that this is how we turn modelling (not really falsifiable) into science (testing hypotheses with data)

YouTube video by Devin Townsend Project - Topic Grace

A classic to celebrate this evening's proposal submission. If you haven't heard this before, I recommend sticking with it, it's somewhat unlikely you've heard a song like this before!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxjE...
Lyrics www.metalkingdom.net/lyrics-song/...

Some shots from wintery commutes in 2025!

Nice group meeting today, celebrating exciting new positions and discussing the diverse ways we do science with data! Thanks all

And very new indeed, here's HyperLAU, an approach using tools from linear algebra to capture uncertainty in (phylogenetically embedded) accumulation models that supports flexible model structure and data inputs @jessirenz.bsky.social ! arxiv.org/abs/2502.05872 . Would love to chat about these! 3/3

Here's a "picture guide" (led by Ramon) describing approaches for these models and their inference, from cancer to evol bio and other applications arxiv.org/abs/2312.06824 (also see Ramon and colleagues' great repo of software approaches for EvAM github.com/rdiaz02/EvAM...) 2/

We've been thinking a lot about "accumulation models" lately -- inferring how systems accumulate features over time. May be mutations in a tumor, characters in evol bio, gene losses in oDNA. Here's an instance of the well-known Mk model that captures this picture academic.oup.com/bioinformati... 1/

This year’s Mørketidens Mattemøte once again brought mathematicians from across Norway and the Nordic countries to @uitnorgesarktiske.bsky.social for two inspiring days of idea exchange and new connections.
Thanks to Tromsø Forskningsstiftelse and Trond Mohn forskningsstiftelse for the support !

Getting back on the reading after a busy semester start. These look exciting in the world of organelle genomes!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... (congrats @sloanevolab.bsky.social et al.!)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... (congrats @wallaceucsf.bsky.social et al.!)

I found this pretty confusing. The docs say we're "aiming for the lowest possible rarity" -- but isn't it the opposite? We're trying to use words that other people haven't? But the "rarity score" increases if we use more commonly-used words -- so we want a low rarity score, which means high rarity?

YouTube video by Stochastic Biology Group Why I think classical applied statistics is cool

Advanced machine learning methods are cool, but here's why I'm excited to be teaching classic STAT200 (applied statistics) this spring! Featuring some of Bergen's mountains
youtu.be/IdC7SzPV6EU

First skitur of 2025, chasing the sunrise

Properties of number 2025 All about number 2025 : over 180 properties tested, factorization, divisors, base conversions

Happy new year! Write down 1 once, 2 twice, 3 three times, etc. 122333444455555.... Once you get to forty-five 45s, sum up all the digits you've written down. It's 2025 (45×45). 2025 is the only number except 1 for which this happens. Here's more 2025 fun www.numbersaplenty.com/2025

A family of NADPH/NADP+ biosensors reveals in vivo dynamics of central redox metabolism across eukaryotes - Nature Communications This article presents NAPstars, a family of genetically-encoded biosensors that enable real-time monitoring of NADP redox dynamics across species. The sensors reveal robust NADP redox regulation, cell...

A new biosensor is born 👼
The NAPstar family of genetically-encoded sensors for live NADP redox monitoring🔋🪫

Jointly with the Morgan lab & @riemerlab.bsky.social we looked in vitro, in yeast, plants & mammalian cells 🧪🦠🧫🌱

Where to go next? @naturecomms.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1038/s414...

PLOS receives $3.3M grant to support Open Access publishing & business model transformation - The Official PLOS Blog Note: PLOS issued the following press release on Tuesday, December 10. PLOS has been awarded a $3.3million grant from the Bill &amp…

We're excited to announce a generous $3.3M grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This support reinforces our mission to inspire new transformative open science models and pioneer a shift away from traditional publishing models and APCs. Read more on The Official PLOS Blog. plos.io/4iynqsD

Phylogenetic summary of MutS gene presence/absence across plant diversity and other eukaryotes

Happy to share our collaborative review on the expansion of the MutS gene family in plants and all the cool (and in some cases still unknown) roles of these genes. Now published in @theplantcell.bsky.social!

doi.org/10.1093/plce...

Fluorescence microscopy of plant leaf cells showing mitochondrial and chloroplast targeting of proteins.

Second paper from the lab out today (woohoo!). This one led by Rachael DeTar. Check out what happens to mito+plastid translation machinery in plants that have lost photosynthesis!

Published in @pnas.org: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Also available on bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Amazing news - the exhibition 'Jellyfish unveiled' is extended until January 26 at the University Museum of Bergen! Discover the secrets of jellyfish and their kin through the eyes of @joanjsoto.bsky.social, @alexandrejan.bsky.social & Anne Aasjord 📸🌊🧪
Find out more: tinyurl.com/3c2yjj2f