Felix Mikus

Happy to share that I defended my PhD this week!
✨✨It has been an amazing adventure full of learning, great science and incredible people here at @embl.org!✨✨
Looking forward to the next steps in my scientific journey
🔬🐟💛
If you haven't yet, check the preprint of my PhD research: bit.ly/45eBxOg

Such a pleasure to be co-organising the #Latsis Symposium this year with Guillermina !

Thanks to all the speakers & sponsors.

And all our teams members who helped make this a reality.

It just felt right.

#Science #WildCells #ProtistsOnSky #Cell #Biology #Biophysics #Behaviour

After 5 amazing years @pilhoferlab.bsky.social I'm starting my lab @embl.org Grenoble this November embl.org/wollweber
We'll image Asgard archaea and many other strange microbes ( #archaeasky, #protistsonsky..) to understand eukaryogenesis
First job ad: #teamtomo scientist!🔬❄️ tinyurl.com/2rdu2ze6

1/27 We have a new paper out! Turns out that snowflake yeast have been hiding a secret from us - they've evolved a (very!) crude circulatory system. Not with blood vessels or a heart, but through spontaneous fluid flows powered by their metabolism. 🧪🔬

www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Sketch of membrane-enclosed compartment with particles on its surface, which interact with an adjacent structure

🧵 🧪 1/ Hi! I’m excited to share our latest work, now on arXiv:

Repulsive particle interactions at cellular interfaces enable selective information processing (arxiv.org/abs/2506.14739)

Where we explore how the physical properties of living systems can help cells process spatial information.

Excited to share the lab's 1rst preprint! Rapid high-res immunofluorescence is now possible in cultured & environmental diatoms thanks to 4-fold expansion microscopy. A step-change for comparative cell biology in one of the most important phytoplankton groups on the planet 🥳
tinyurl.com/m9s5su7s 1/2

Research

Are you interested to give expansion microscopy a try in your favorite organism(s)?
Shoot us a message!
www.dudinlab.com/you-want-to-...

Thanks a lot to my host @dolfweijers.bsky.social and Sjoerd for their generosity, expertise and access to all those beauties! 💚

First stop of our @moorefound.bsky.social endeavour - @bic-wur.bsky.social. Sjoerd is keeping me busy with a bunch of species and we are busy fixing and plunge freezing them for the best possible #UExM results
#makeitbigger #50shadesofgreen
@dudinlab.bsky.social @gautamdey.bsky.social
@Tom Richards

Thank you to Sjoerd and @dolfweijers.bsky.social for hosting me and providing expertise and access to those beauties! 💚

Research

Interested in trying expansion in your favorite organism? Let us know! www.dudinlab.com/you-want-to-...
@biology-unige.bsky.social @embl.org

In the context of our @reviewcommons.org revision process, I'm happy to announce Microscopy Nodes v2.2.0!
This packs lots of new fun features, including new color management 🌈, clearer transparency handling 🫥, custom default settings 🔧 and more!
Preprint at doi.org/10.1101/2025...

The new issue is out! 👉 cell.com/cell/current

On the cover, Beckwith and Brunner et al. uncover that chromosomes self-organize into their characteristic mitotic rod shape through the formation of large and extensively overlapping DNA loops

📷credit: Andreas Brunner.

Very excited to get started! 🔬🕵🏻‍♂️
If you’ve got some cool bugs, shoot us a mail! #UExM

Wow! The actin looks amazing! 😍

Expansion microscopy micrograph of the choanoflagellate Choanoeca flexa, vaguely evocative of a cactus. Red = tubulin, green = actin, blue = DNA

Same with yellow = lipids (BODIPY)

A dream come true: the first expansion microscopy images of C. flexa 🤩 Generated by Mylan & Uzuki who learned from the best (@hiralshah.bsky.social @gautamdey.bsky.social @dudinlab.bsky.social). We will learn so much from these!

First study from the lab is out! We describe ApuRs, a new family of microbial rhodopsins unique from apusomonads. ApuRs represent the first anion-conducting rhodopsin channels that can be controlled by UV light, offering potential as new optogenetic tools. #protistsonsky
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
👇

In a collaboration between the @hennig-lab.bsky.social and @olivierduss.bsky.social labs we revealed how proteins work together to control gene expression through mRNA translation repression! Using single-molecule microscopy, we watched individual molecules in action. doi.org/10.1101/2025... 🧵

With Guillermina Ramirez-SanJuan we are very happy to announce the upcoming Latsis Symposium " Shaping microbial life in a changing environment" over July 8-10 at #EPFL
Registrations are open til May 23rd.

LINK: www.epfl-latsis-2025.org

Adhesion-driven tissue rigidification triggers epithelial cell polarity The active regulation of tissue material properties via phase transitions is central in morphogenesis. Transitions abruptly occur at critical points in diverse control parameters, including cell densi...

🔗 You can read the full story here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#DevBio #Mechanobiology #Biophysics

🎉 Excited to share our new work: “Adhesion-driven tissue rigidification triggers epithelial cell polarity”, now on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social !

A huge thank you to @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social, Bernat, @crisp-c.bsky.social, Adrián, and everyone involved! 🙌

🧵⤵️

I'm super happy that our story is now published!
📖 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
But what changed compared to the original preprint?

Also, I feel i should post Movie 1 🎥, that inspired the cover. Back when I did the original bluesky thread, movies were not available.

The final version of our work on the in-cell architecture of the mitochondrial respiratory chain is now online in @science.org 🎉
You can find the full story here www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
@verenaresch.bsky.social did a wonderful job on the cover and animation, she really brought it to life 👩‍🎨

Credit: Margot Riggi (@margotriggi.bsky.social), Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry (@mpibiochem.bsky.social)

Asgard archaea have actin - but what about microtubules? Where do they come from? 🧐 Our new paper www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... by @xujwet.bsky.social & @florianwollweber.bsky.social, in collaboration with the Schleper & Wieczorek labs, describes tiny Asgard microtubules! #TeamTomo #ArchaeaSky 1/6

PhD position available in Ceske Budejovice (Czechia), funded by ERC KLEPTOS, to study plastid endosymbiosis in kleptoplastidic protists. Are you curious about this process and do you like sampling/cultivation of protists? Join our team by applying here: jobs.bc.cas.cz/en/detail/243

#protistsonsky

One of the chapters of my PhD thesis made it into a preprint last night. We found a widespread association of placozoans with Rickettsiales symbionts across host species and environments. Happy to hear your thoughts on it 🧬

Evolutionary history of the widespread association between placozoans and diverse Rickettsiales symbionts https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.27.640636v1

Centromere evolution isn't a sudden switch!

Our study shows centromere transitions are a step-by-step process driven by a combination of drift and selection. Discover how the kinetochore interface shapes this gradual change in our new preprint 🥳 doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.16.633479 🧵(1/8)

Does anyone know what this is? I’ve no idea! Thanks in advance for any help. From a marine plankton trawl, Southern North Sea. 98 um long, 68 um diameter. Photo is a stack. 🦑

Love it!! That’s it! ❤️
Also, crazy stuff, I love it more!
#protitsonsky