Galen Ptacek

Check out that spindle 🤩🔥

At 63C, most eukaryotic cells would be busy exploding noisily, forget even trying to divide.

The microbial universe never ceases to astound 😍

Thanks for letting us be a tiny part of this! #ExpandThemAll

Out after peer-review: www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Our bottom line stayed: never use leave-one-out cross-validation as it has inherent train-test leakage. Consider our Rebalanced version instead!

We now also account for regression and nested cross-validation, with more extensive benchmarking.

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 🧵

After 10 Fridays, 10 flowers, and 100+ drawings, the Florédex is complete! ✨

Come take a tour of the design and science behind 10 iconic flowers 🌺🧵

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

Coin Flows and the "End" of the Ancient World Revisiting Modern Assumptions about the Past

happy monday! new FREE newsletter piece by me and @lollardfish.bsky.social as we talk about, well, the supposed "fall of rome" yet again. this time we revisit what's known as the "Pirenne Thesis" and how some think Islam fits in all this...

#medievalsky

buttondown.com/ModernMediev...

Impossible to resist the big brown eyes of a Tufted Titmouse who wants a peanut.

A great teaching moment here for genetic design students:

NEVER assume any annotation that just says "promoter" and always inspect the elements along with the publication where said genetic part was designed/discovered no matter how long ago the article was written.

Judge Rules Flock Surveillance Images Are Public Records That Can Be Requested By Anyone A Washington judge said images taken by Flock cameras are "not exempt from disclosure" in public record requests.

A Washington judge said images taken by Flock cameras are "not exempt from disclosure" in public record requests.

Autoinhibitory calcium ATPases regulate the calcium gradient required for rapid polarized growth, say Samantha Ryken, Magdalena Bezanilla and colleagues (Dartmouth College): rupress.org/jcb/article/...

#PlantBiology #Trafficking #Cytoskeleton

Flashback #FluorescenceFriday to some of the first light-sheet imaging we were doing. Video shows the collecting duct system of the developing kidney labeled with a pan-cytokeratin antibody. Courtesy of former talented technician Deanna Hardesty.

Okee here goes my first attempt at carbide whisker mediated plant transformation! Short thread! 🧵

1/10

Single-particle genomics uncovers abundant non-canonical marine viruses from nanolitre volumes - Nature Microbiology Environmental micro-compartment genomics provides efficient and high-throughput single-particle DNA sequencing that captures overlooked members of microbial communities.

#NewResearch

Single-particle genomics uncovers abundant non-canonical marine viruses from nanolitre volumes

@rstepanauskas.bsky.social & co

#microsky

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

We are really proud of this report from our 3 colloquia convened by the AAM and supported by the Moore Foundation. A few experts even said they would use it as their introductory textbook for this area. Please check it out!

Cryo-EM structure of the naked mole-rat ribosome reveals a stabilized split 28S rRNA The naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) is a long-lived mammal with remarkable resistance to cancer and hypoxia, suggesting the evolution of robust proteostasis networks. The ribosome, the central ...

We have a new preprint for you. Naked mole rats are very long-lived rodents and have increased translational fidelity.

Interestingly, 28S ribosomal RNA is split. Here we investigated the structure of the ribosome by single particle cryo-EM. Take a look.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from?

Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral reverse transcriptases, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria.

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🦠🐘 From bacteria to the elephant ... with a twist. Eukaryotic telomerases originate in antiphage reverse transcriptases 🤯.

Mindblowing discovery from @stephentang23.bsky.social @sternberglab.bsky.social.
Such an incredible exaptation event uncovered through molecular genetics and genomics.

NEW: Biofuels globally emit more than the fossil fuels they replace, our latest study shows.

The first-of-a-kind study looks at global biofuels production today and the potential impacts of government biofuel targets.
🧵⤵️

Massive undertaking with @teppo-h.bsky.social and others out. We studied 4 years (!!!) of synthetic 23 microbial species community evolution with/without antibiotic. Resistance mutations occurring over years led to stepwise restructuring and ultimately recovery of undisturbed community composition.

#SymbioSky #ProtistsOnSky

𝘉𝘰𝘥𝘰 𝘴𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘴 & Company (Alphaproteobacteria: Holosporales)

The koji-fungus, Aspergillus oryzae, traditionally used in Japanese brewing, is now widely used to make enzymes.

It seems its capacity for enzyme production is thanks to its unique ability to proportionally increase cell volume and nuclear number.
buff.ly/bPSNRL6

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 many previously uncultured, oligotrophic bacteria that may serve as model organisms.

⚠️New paper ➡️ isolating >600 freshwater microbes using dilution-to-extinction and low-nutrient, lake-mimicking media.

🤯Expands cultured diversity to ~70 % of detected genera and enables physiological studies of streamlined oligotrophs.

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#protistsonsky

Filamentous cheater phages drive bacterial and phage populations to lower fitness Kubota et al. show that bacteria can use their filamentous phage to outcompete other bacteria, but increased phage production enables the evolution of cheater miniphages with truncated genomes. Miniph...

Filamentous cheater phages drive bacterial and phage populations to lower fitness

Pseudomonas aeruginosa VS Pf phage

@currentbiology.bsky.social by @nanamikubota.bsky.social, @shellyscrib.bsky.social and @vscooper.micropopbio.org

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

#PhageSky

Localized glutamine leakage drives the spatial structure of root microbial colonization Plant roots release exudates to encourage microbiome assembly, which influences the function and stress resilience of plants. How specific exudates drive spatial colonization patterns remains largely ...

A long road to the Cover of Science!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A miniature CRISPR–Cas10 enzyme confers immunity by inhibitory signalling - Nature Panoptes, an anti-phage defence system against virus-mediated immune suppression, is revealed.

Today in @nature.com , we highlight how a cousin of CRISPR-Cas10, mCpol, establishes an evolutionary trap in anti-phage immune systems.

Check out @erinedoherty.bsky.social and my work from @doudna-lab.bsky.social lab here:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Heads or tails Efficient navigation in magnetotactic bacteria requires an optimal combination of swimming speed, magnetic moment and body size.

Efficient navigation in magnetotactic bacteria requires an optimal combination of swimming speed, magnetic moment and body size.
buff.ly/wmdBbD1.

🌱 Using ‘compelling’ methods, including #CryoET, researchers mapped spinach thylakoid membranes at single-molecule precision, revealing how photosynthetic complexes are organised and settling long-standing debates on chloroplast architecture.
buff.ly/j3TSIkn

PlasmidScope: a comprehensive plasmid database with rich annotations and online analytical tools Abstract. Plasmids are extrachromosomal genetic molecules that replicate independent of chromosomes in bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotic organisms. They co

A huge, new resource for plasmid research - PlasmidScope is a database of 852,000 #plasmid sequences with a rich set of annotations, automated online analysis and interactive visualisation academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

TEtrimmer: a tool to automate the manual curation of transposable elements. #TransposableElements #ManualCuration #Genomics #Bioinformatics @natcomms.nature.com 🧬 🖥️
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Dual transposon sequencing profiles the genetic interaction landscape in bacteria Gene redundancy complicates systematic characterization of gene function as single-gene deletions may not produce discernible phenotypes. We report dual transposon sequencing (dual Tn-seq), a platform...

Dual transposon sequencing profiles the genetic interaction landscape in bacteria | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...