Varsha Mathur

Rubisco is slow across the tree of life | PNAS Rubisco is the main gateway through which inorganic carbon enters the biosphere, catalyzing the vast majority of carbon fixation on Earth. This piv...

Rubisco is slow across the tree of life www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... #jcampubs

now i've seen everything... 😱
don't care what anybody says but #protists are cognitive

Is it a flagellate? A tiny ball with tentacles? Contamination in my ciliate culture? NEW SUPERGROUP OF EUKARYOTES? Yes to all 4! Meet Solarion - just out in #Nature doi.org/10.1038/s415... Huge congrats to Marek Valt, Cepicka Lab & the star team! Very happy to be part of this project. #ProtistsOnSky

Adenine DNA methylation associated with transcriptionally permissive chromatin is widespread across eukaryotes - Nature Genetics Long-read sequencing in 18 unicellular eukaryotes reveals that 6mA is widespread across eukaryotes and is enriched at transcriptionally permissive regions, which are also marked by H3K4me3.

Out today, our take on 6-methyladenine #6mA evolution in Eukaryotes @natgenet.nature.com. We asked a simple question, is really DNA 6mA common across the eukaryotes? The answer is "yes" if you're a unicellular eukaryote 🦠, not so if you're multicellular 🐝🌱🍄. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/9

Myosin 2 drives actin contractility in fast-crawling species outside of the amorphean lineage Myosin 2-dependent actin contractility—the force that powers cell division and migration in animals, fungi, and other Amorphea—had been previously unknown outside this single eukaryotic group. Guest e...

Our work on Naegleria Myosin 2 is out!

Naegleria encodes 3 Myo2s which contract its actin network—the first evidence of contractile Myo2 outside of Amorphea.
Myo2 is actually widespread in Naegleria's relatives and correlates with fast cell crawling.

Read more: www.cell.com/current-biol...

PhD student in systematic biology The Department of Organismal Biology teaches and explores the evolution, development and function on the organismal level. For more information see Department of Organismal Biology - Uppsala Universit

It is a collaboration between my lab (Uppsala U) and the labs of @dudinlab.bsky.social (Geneva U) and @filiphusnik.bsky.social (OIST). More info and how to apply here:
uu.varbi.com/en/what:job/.... (The use of AI for writing the motivation letter is discouraged and will be regarded unfavourably) 2/2

Wound healing is a hallmark feature of all life, including single cells. In a new preprint, Ambika Nadkarni @biochembika.bsky.social investigates a new dimension in cellular wound healing: how cells recover AFTER the wound has been closed

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Pleased to share our latest paper led by @tomlewin.bsky.social, now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social! We present the first chromosome-level genome of a phoronid and show that shared chromosomal fusions unite phoronids and bryozoans as sister groups.
www.cell.com/current-biol...

Remote sensing of lichens with drones for detecting dinosaur bones Brian Pickles and colleagues show that exposed dinosaur bones can be remote sensed with drones by virtue of colored lichens growing on them.

If someone told you: "I'm doing a study featuring lichen, drones and #dinosaur bones" What would you say?

www.cell.com/current-biol...

This paper has been a must! Great collaboration with @mkrupovic.bsky.social and @yifanzhou.bsky.social, a N&V by a legend of halophilic archaea tinyurl.com/yc3dcv72, and one picture of one of our expeditions to Dallol making the cover of the November issue of @natmicrobiol.nature.com

rdcu.be/eLtCH

🚨Our collaboration with @centriolelab.bsky.social & @gautamdey.bsky.social is out today in @cp-cell.bsky.social
We show that #Expansion #Microscopy is a broad-spectrum modality for Euks, enabling 3D phenotypic maps rooted to phylogeny.
#ProtistsOnSky #SciComm #SciSky

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Exciting day for the lab: our 1rst paper is officially out in @currentbiology.bsky.social 🥳 Wonderful collaboration wt @gautamdey.bsky.social showing how Cryo-ExM achieves consistent immunostaining in diverse diatoms, from the lab and the natural environment 1/n
#ProtistsOnSky
tinyurl.com/2zxaund7

This Halloween, we have a spooky evolutionary story for you.
The brainchild of @delaconcepcionjc.bsky.social, Nick Irwin and our fantastic collaborators is now out in @natplants.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Here’s why I love this work — and why I think you’ll enjoy it too. 👇

Beautiful work all 🤩🤩

Had a fun two weeks in Heidelberg visiting in the @floravincent.bsky.social and @gautamdey.bsky.social labs! Expanding diatoms and their evil little parasites was peak Halloween vibes 🎃 @embl.org #ExM #diatoms

So happy to see my first first-author paper published! 🎈
A short thread on how Ectocarpus and its TE secrets have kept me busy lately:

rdcu.be/eITQH

Targeted genetic manipulation and yeast-like evolutionary genomics in the green alga Auxenochlorella Auxenochlorella, green algae shaped by evolutionary forces acting on vegetative diploids, are amenable to discovery research and bioengineering via efficie

Excited to introduce Auxenochlorella as a new algal reference organism for fundamental plant science and bioengineering. A paper in two parts: a genetic toolkit for site-specific genomic manipulation, paired with the most unusual genome I’ve ever worked on

academic.oup.com/plcell/artic...

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

Lab’s first paper is out!! We show the first structures of #Asgard #chromatin by #cryo-EM 🧬❄️
Asgard histones form closed and open hypernucleosomes. Closed are conserved across #Archaea, while open resemble eukaryotic H3–H4 octasomes and are Asgard-specific. More here: www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Our collaboration with @mbonhivers.bsky.social is now out in @plosbiology.org! 🎉Using U-ExM, we mapped the formation of the flagellar pocket collar in T. brucei. Huge thanks to everyone involved — one step closer to #PhDone!

#ExM #oneringtorulethemall #Bilbo1 #trypanosoma #protistsonsky

Innate immune responses to Plasmodium falciparum disrupt the blood-brain barrier Plasmodium falciparum accumulation at the blood-brain barrier (BBB) is a hallmark of cerebral malaria, a life-threatening complication. Conversely, the contribution of the immune response to vascular ...

Pre-print alert 🚨
We answer a longstanding question in the field. Do immune cells cause cerebral malaria?

The answer is YES!!!! And independently of P. falciparum accumulation in the brain.

www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Declining ocean greenness and phytoplankton blooms in low to mid-latitudes under a warming climate Chlorophyll a is declining in low- to mid-latitude oceans, indicating reduced ocean productivity and fewer phytoplankton blooms.

Declining ocean greenness and phytoplankton blooms in low to mid-latitudes under a warming climate www.science.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs 🌊

New deep-branching environmental plastid genomes on the algal tree of life Marine algae support the entire ocean ecosystem and greatly impact planetary biology. The availability of algae in culture poorly represents their large environmental diversity, and we still have a li...

We have recently shown the large potential of organellar genome-resolved metagenomics by assembling 100s of new marine plastid MAGs (ptMAGs), including revealing the new deep-branching algal group leptophytes: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Picture of an Oculina patagonica colony. Some of the individual polyps in the colony have a brown-yellow colour, indicating that they harbour symbiotic algae. Others are completely white and lack algae.

Close-up picture of symbiotic Oculina polyps.

Hot off the press! Our latest work on the evolution of facultative symbiosis in stony corals, focusing on a remarkable Mediterranean species: Oculina patagonica.

🪸 🌊

#evobio #corals #coralbiology

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

We are happy to share our latest work in @nature.com . We study the genomic and cellular basis of facultative symbiosis in Oculina patagonica - a Mediterranean coral remarkable for its ability to survive long periods without algal symbionts. Led by Shani Levy and @xgrau.bsky.social
rdcu.be/eLbaZ

wowww. Very nice Luis!! 🤩

Our study on the first rhodopsin channels known to respond to UV light is now published in PNAS! And they come from our favourite protists, apusomonads! #protistonsky

www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Just 5 more days left to apply to the Workshop on Genomics 2026, in Cesky Krumov, Czechia! evomics.org/apply-worksh... (Deadline 20th of October) Do not miss your chance! 💻🤗 #Bioinformatics #Genomics #evomics2026

Wow beautiful work 😍 congratulations!

We're excited to share with everyone a preprint of our manuscript that resolves the cellular origins of the symbiosome in cnidarian-algal symbiosis through proteomics of the symbiosome, RNAi, and CRISPR/Cas9 experiments. ⬇️
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Read on below!

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