Lauren Queiss

Congratulations @lqueiss.bsky.social 👏🎉😀

Lauren won the Best Poster Award at the Women in Electron Microscopy (#WeM) – Exchange and Networking event @fz-juelich.de

Pic: FZJülich/Kurt Steinhausen
www.mpi-bremen.de/en/Lauren-Qu...

#WomeninSTEM #marinescience #MachMINT @maxplanck.de #FemaleScience

Some years ago, we discovered a modern microbialite reef under conditions resembling primitive Earth 🌋

Now we show how seasonal extremes drive microbial shifts and mineralisation, offering a window into processes that shaped Earth’s first biostructures 🪨

www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02764-6

Hijacking a bacterial ABC transporter for genetic code expansion - Nature Bacterial ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters can be utilized and engineered to transport non-canonical amino acids into Escherichia coli for highly efficient synthesis of proteins with novel func...

🚨Our paper is out! 🥳
Hijacking a bacterial ABC transporter for efficient genetic code expansion.
Many congrats to everyone involved - a multi-year effort led by @taruniype.bsky.social @maxfottner.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

it all started years ago with a failed experiment
🧵👇 1/9

Ecological constraints foster both extreme viral-host lineage stability and mobile element diversity in a marine community Phages are typically viewed as very rapidly evolving biological entities. Little is known, however, about whether and how phages can establish long-term genetic stability. We addressed this eco-evolut...

Phages evolve fast, or do they?
In oysters, some stay identical for years.
With >1,200 phages & 600 Vibrio genomes, we reveal long-term stability and new mobile elements.
Proud of this collaborative work across our teams (Roscoff-UdeM and @epcrocha.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Balancing stability and flexibility when reshaping archaeal membranes.
buff.ly/4yqUdBj

Oceanic cyanobacterial photosynthesis is negatively affected by viral NblA proteins www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Compositional analysis of bacterial peptidoglycan: insights from peptidoglycomics into structure and function | Journal of Bacteriology Peptidoglycan (PG) is a crucial biopolymer in the bacterial cell wall that has been the subject of intense study since it was first isolated in the early 1950s (1, 2). Over the last 70 years, extensive research has expanded our understanding of the structure and function of this microbial biopolymer. Recent advances in mass spectrometry and bioinformatics have revolutionized PG analysis, enabling a comprehensive detection of individual components and their global composition within bacterial cells. Like genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics, peptidoglycomics is the non-targeted, non-biased detection of all elements that comprise the overall PG structure. Peptidoglycomic analyses can identify and monitor hundreds of potential compositional changes that occur within the PG structure of a cell. By comparison, traditional methods of analyzing PG composition only distinguish a relatively limited number of PG components. Therefore, peptidoglycomic approaches produce a detailed global overview of the PG structural elements and give unprecedented insight into the physiological function of this biopolymer within the bacterial cell.

Compositional analysis of bacterial peptidoglycan: insights from peptidoglycomics into structure and function | Journal of Bacteriology https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/jb.00359-25?af=R

Principal coordinate analysis of the particle-associated communities that increased in the free-living fraction in response to Tween treatments (P value < 0.01). The color of the particle-associated (triangle) shapes corresponds to the Tween treatment, as indicated by the key. The crosses indicate the centroid points for each treatment. Vectors represent increased PA-OTUs with significant relationships (P value < 0.01) to the ordination axes, which are driving the differences in PA-OTU community composition between Tween treatments. Red vector labels represent E-PA-OTUs that increased significantly (P value < 0.05) in the FL fraction in response to at least one Tween treatment relative to controls.

Marine particles harbor microbial communities. However, to study them, they must be separated from the particle. How? This #AppEnvMicro article outlines an optimized method using detergents to dissociate microbes from marine particles. Get the details: asm.social/2DG

Programmable antisense oligomers for phage functional genomics - Nature Establishing antisense oligomers as versatile, non-genetic tools to silence phage mRNAs opens applications in basic research and biotechnology, as shown by identifying essential factors for propagatio...

No Genetics? Try ASOs – A non-genetic approach to silence genes at the phage-host interface. We use it to study jumbo phage biology and anti-phage defence.
@jorg-vogel-lab.bsky.social @helmholtz-hiri.bsky.social
@uni-wuerzburg.de @helmholtzhzi.bsky.social
published now in @nature.com

Her story celebrates women in marine science and the fight to protect our blue planet — all from a small, storm-tossed island in the Irish Sea.

If you care about the ocean’s future, this one’s a tide worth catching. 🌊✨

📘 Spring Tides by Fiona Gell
🔹 Reviewed by Matthew Bunce FMBA

#MarineScience

Book spotlight - SPRING TIDES by Fiona Gell

Book Spotlight: Spring Tides by Fiona Gell

A lyrical dive into the Isle of Man’s marine life — and what it teaches us about ocean conservation, policy, and the human heart.

I’m excited to take part in the very first Women in Electron Microscopy (WEM) Conference hosted by @fz-juelich.de for breaking barriers and building networks!

#womeninSTEM #ElectronMicroscopy

Cryo-EM resolves the structure of the archaeal dsDNA virus HFTV1 from head to tail This structure of an archaeal tailed virus (arTV) provides detailed insights into arTV assembly and infection mechanisms.

Out in Science Advances: Our #cryoEM structure of HFTV1, a virus infecting the halophile #archaea. *First full atomic structure (containing all structural proteins) of any tailed virus!* Congrats and thanks to all co-authors and our fantastic collaborators! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Jane Goodall’s legacy: three ways she changed science The primatologist challenged what it meant to be a scientist.

Jane Goodall, known for her pioneering work with chimpanzees, has passed away aged 91

go.nature.com/46K10ja

Photos of Jane Goodall in Gombe National Park, credit Simon Fraser University

then turned that knowledge into a global movement for conservation. Her work made it impossible to separate what we learn from our obligation to protect it. Generations of researchers have tried to follow that example." 2/2

Portrait of Jane Goodall

From IGI Founder Jennifer Doudna: "Jane Goodall showed us what a life in science could look like: rigorous discovery paired with fierce advocacy for what you study. She gave the world six decades of groundbreaking research on chimpanzees and their habitats... 1/2

Temporal and spatial coordination of DNA segregation and cell division in an archaeon. Cells must coordinate DNA segregation with cytokinesis to ensure that each daughter cell inherits a complete genome. Here, we explore how DNA segregation and division are mechanistically coupled in ar...

We are excited to share our preprint describing how Sulfolobus cells coordinate DNA segregation with cell division! In eukaryotes this type of regulation involves checkpoints and CDK-cyclins. But how does this work in archaea? This is the question we ask in our paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Dr. Alicia L. Bruzos (center), recipient of a Minerva Fast Track Fellowship, with MPG Vice President Dr. Asifa Akhtar (left) and Tobias Erb from the MPI for Terrestrial Microbiology (right) at the award ceremony. (© David Ausserhofer / Max Planck Society)

Hooray, we are growing! 🎉👩‍🔬

We are happy & grateful to welcome #MinervaFastTrack Fellow Alicia L. Bruzos to study how #cancer spreads & forms #metastases in #marine #bivalves.🦪

mpi-bremen.de/en/Page6547....

@bruzos.bsky.social @maxplanck.de
#MaxPlanck #PostDoc #WomeninSTEM #marinescience #Bremen

A New Age of Advanced Volume Microscopy for Protists onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #protists #protistsonsky

Our October issue is out now!

The images are negatively stained electron micrographs taken from archaella bundles isolated from the archaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius.

Check the issue out here:
www.nature.com/nmicrobiol/v...

Formation and dynamics of the plasma membrane reservoir (PMR). The PMR forms prior to the development of the daughter cells’ IMC. Its position and size vary during replication, and it is reabsorbed at the conclusion of daughter cell budding. We propose that the PMR facilitates the expansion of the PM surface during replication. All scale bars represent 1 µm. While the PMR is not always visible due to its transient nature, virtually all the parasites undergoing replication are forming a PMR.

How do #apicomplexans reorganize their #PlasmaMembrane (PM) while replicating inside host cells? This study shows that #Toxoplasma recycles its PM via Rab5b- & MyoF-dependent #endocytosis, linking PM reservoir formation to membrane homeostasis via the micropore @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/46tDxny

Not quite the fieldwork you expect to do at a marine research institute, but that did now stop @fischerlab.bsky.social! 🏔️
With his team, he climbed the Alps to hunt for giant #viruses – almost the size of #bacteria and have been unexplored in many aspects.
#CAPSOLUTION
www.mpg.de/my-science-a...

“Thalastasi: The Ocean’s symphony illuminating the invisible” - a project at the intersection of science and art - was presented during #SAME18 by Marta Royo-Llonch and Vanessa Balaguè.
@same18-bcn.bsky.social

What a beautiful city for the #SAME18 to be held! I’m excited to hear and see some great science and learn about what’s new in aquatic microbial ecology 🌊 @same18-bcn.bsky.social

Polysaccharide-degrading archaea dominate acidic hot springs: genomic and cultivation insights into a novel Thermoproteota lineage
Candidatus Marsarchaeota is now isolated and renamed as Tardisphaerales (phylum Thermoproteota) 🤓
@asm.org
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Seasonal biogeochemical variations in a modern microbialite reef under early Earth-like conditions - Communications Earth & Environment Microbial communities, exposed to early Earth-like conditions in a modern microbialite reef, change cyclically due to seasonal environmental variations, implying evolved metabolic processes in microbialites over time, based on multiple chemical, physical, and biological analyses.

Seasonal biogeochemical variations in a modern microbialite reef under early Earth-like conditions
#geochemistry
www.nature.com/articles/s43...

FISH-FACS proteomics: enhanced label-free quantitative proteome analysis from low cell numbers of uncultured environmental microorganisms academic.oup.com/ism...

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#proteomics #prot-paper

Naiavirus: an enveloped giant virus with a pleomorphic, flexible tail - Nature Communications Rodrigues and Queiroz et al. report the discovery of Naiavirus, the largest enveloped virus, isolated from a Brazil biome. With an oval capsid and flexible tail, its giant genome holds many novel gene...

Naiavirus: an enveloped giant virus with a pleomorphic, flexible tail
nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63463-6

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 man...

Bringing the uncultivated microbial majority of freshwater ecosystems into culture www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

Insights into the Evolutionary and Ecological Roles of Bathyarchaeia in Arsenic Detoxification Arsenic (As) is a prevalent toxic element, posing significant risks to organisms, including microbes. While microbial arsenic detoxification has been extensively studied in bacteria, archaeal mechanis...

Insights into the Evolutionary and Ecological Roles of Bathyarchaeia in Arsenic Detoxification
#microbiology #archaea #Bathyarchaeia #arsenic
pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1...