Anthony M. Bonacolta

CryoET of microbes inside an animal organ? Yes it’s possible! Check out our new preprint showing how we did it! What an amazing collaboration with amazing scientists who made this possible!

So happy to announce our new preprint, “A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes.” We cultured a novel amoeba from Lassen Volcanic NP (CA, USA) that divides at 63°C (145°F) 🔥 - a new record for euk growth!
#protistsonsky 🧵

Bath city centre

Pulteney weir in Bath

Bath city centre

Bath cathedral

🎉 There are currently 4 opportunities to join the Holt lab in beautiful Bath! 🎉

If you're interested in protists, parasites, and/or biodiversity then please check out our website:
theholtlab.com/posts/ln5-21...

🚨 Deadlines vary between project.
✉️ Please reach out if you have any questions!

📢 rphylopic 📦 1.6.0 is now on #CRAN!

- resolve_phylopic() retries failing API calls 🔄
- geom_phylopic()/add_phylopic() work with ggplot2 4.0.0 🪛
- add_phylopic_tree() wraps add_phylopic() for base R trees 🪾
- get_phylopic() can get og source files from #PhyloPic 👤

rphylopic.palaeoverse.org
#Rstats

I’m presenting Sunday too! Excited to catch up

My first #PhD dissertation chapter was just published in Ecology and Evolution! We characterized the gene expression patterns of staghorn and knobby brain corals in response to thermal preconditioning. read our #openaccess paper here! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

The Lariviere lab at UMiami is recruiting PhD students! Incoming students will join us in studying host-microbe interactions in the honey bee gut, using molecular and genetic approaches. Please see the attached flyer for more details.

#Symbiosis #SymbioSky #MicroSky #PhDOpportunity #AcademicJobs

NEW pub in @science.org 🥳

Is it sponges (panels A & B) or comb jellies (C & D) that root the animal tree of life?

For over 15 years, #phylogenomic studies have been divided.

We provide new evidence suggesting that...

🔗: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Here, we show that deep below, corals and feather stars don’t just share space – they share microbes. Endozoicomonadaceae + Nitrosopumilaceae inhabit both hosts in a “promiscuous” symbiosis that may fuel nitrogen cycling in the deep sea.
doi.org/10.1186/s401... 🌊🪸🧪 #Bioinformatics 🧬💻 #SymbioSky

Trust me I tried… 😂

Was the same in Vancouver last night 🥲

the top half shows two panels with microscopy images. Left is a light-microscopy image of a group of algal cells. The cells are round with different sizes. Two arrows point at sporangia: one looks as if someone stuffed 8 footballs in a thin elastic bag. The other is perfectly round and contains many small spores within. The right panel shows the same group of cells, but in fluorescent microscopy, where green color shows chloroplasts. In each cell the chloroplasts are globular with small lobes sticking out. The bottom half shows a photo of Xanthoria lichen - bright yellow and leafy growing on a tree branch

Our paper on the #genome of the Trebouxia #photobiont from Xanthoria is now out in @newphyt.bsky.social! Check below for a near-chromosome level assembly, secretome analysis, evidence of ancient HGT, and transcriptomic comparison of the alga in symbiosis and in pure culture
doi.org/10.1111/nph.70728

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

BEREN: A bioinformatic tool for recovering Giant viruses, Polinton-like Viruses, and Virophages in metagenomic data AbstractMotivation. Viruses in the kingdom Bamfordvirae, specifically giant viruses (NCLDVs) in the phylum Nucleocytoviricota and smaller members in the Pr

Excited to share our new paper introducing BEREN, a tool for identifying giant and other dsDNA viruses from metagenomic data — now online!
Beren improves viral genome recovery and expands our view of the virosphere.
academic.oup.com/bioinformati...

Oligonucleotide design meets big data:
We present oligoN-design, a simple, reproducible and versatile open-source tool to design specific primers and probes directly from large environmental DNA datasets.
🔗 DOI: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
👉 github.com/MiguelMSandi...

GW4+ DLTP PhD Project: Ecological and Evolutionary Insights from Polar Protists at University of Bath on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - GW4+ DLTP PhD Project: Ecological and Evolutionary Insights from Polar Protists at University of Bath, listed on FindAPhD.com

🥶Our GW4+ PhD project exploring polar protist diversity is accepting applications!🥶

With @tweethinking.bsky.social (@uniofbath.bsky.social) and Melody Clark (@bas.ac.uk), you will uncover the ecological roles, evolutionary histories, and environmental adaptions of polar protists!

Interested? 👀

SWBio DTP PhD Project: Decoding Protist Parasites in Aquaculture with Single-Cell Sequencing at University of Bath on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - SWBio DTP PhD Project: Decoding Protist Parasites in Aquaculture with Single-Cell Sequencing at University of Bath, listed on FindAPhD.com

We have a great PhD project supported by SWBio Doctoral Training Partnership at @uniofbath.bsky.social for 2026!
Come and apply cutting-edge sequencing approaches to tackle animal health in aquaculture! We'll be characterising protist parasites to learn more about their interactions and evolution
🐟

annoSnake: a Snakemake workflow for taxonomic and functional annotation of metagenomes and metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #jcampubs

Love the phage + the traces of the del campo lab in the background 🥹

Please join us next week for the second iteration of the DinoSphere Seminars! This time our two speakers will talk about host-associated dinoflagellates and any challenges they might have encountered when working with them. All current and future friends of dinoflagellates welcome!
#ProtistsOnSky

Python was awarded a funding grant, funding grant asked Python foundation to remove all diversity and inclusion initiatives they have.

Python foundation said no and rejected the grant.

If you use Python, send a few dollars to the charity to keep it going. I’m pushing a dono on behalf of ScamGuard.

Looks great!!

A global coral phylogeny reveals resilience and vulnerability through deep time - Nature The most recent common ancestor of the stony coral Scleractinia dates to about 460 million years ago and was probably a solitary, heterotrophic and free-living organism.

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

Heat-driven functional extinction of Caribbean Acropora corals from Florida’s Coral Reef In 2023, a record-setting marine heat wave triggered the ninth mass coral bleaching event on Florida’s Coral Reef (FCR). We examined spatial patterns of heat exposure along the ~560-kilometer length o...

😢 Heat-driven functional extinction of Caribbean Acropora corals from Florida’s Coral Reef | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Top: Prevalence of Microsporidia in DToL insect genomes. Microsporidian genomes recovered from insect hosts, split by taxonomic order. F: female, M: male, U: unspecified sex. Bottom: Simplified proposed generalized lifecycle for Microsporidia. This proposed model posits that each nucleus is a diploid, and that microsporidian reproduction mirrors reproduction in Fungi with stages similar to karyogamy, plasmogamy, and a stable “heterokaryon” (known as a diplokaryon in Microsporidia). Importantly, both the diplokaryotic and monokaryotic phases are parasitic, and species may spend most of their lifecycle in one or the other phase, giving rise to “diploid” and “tetraploid” lineages.

#Microsporidia are #parasites of growing importance. @amjadkhalaf.bsky.social @mblaxter.bsky.social @marakat.bsky.social &co present 40 new genomes from #DarwinTreeofLife sequencing of their arthropod hosts, revealing insights into #tetraploidy & #reproduction @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/48HsAQJ

Yeah, it just seems like iPhone photos are always so flat. I should probably just bring my camera into campus this week to give these trees some justice

Like this tree looks amazing in person, but so dull here

They should invent a phone that takes good pictures of fall foliage 🍁

GitHub - RILAB/statements: Successful Job Applications and Grants Successful Job Applications and Grants. Contribute to RILAB/statements development by creating an account on GitHub.

Lunch today halfway around the world in Hangzhou and met a new asst professor who was very thankful for this resource. Please help out folks like them and other early career scientists with examples of job apps. Submit yours!
github.com/RILAB/statem...