How life got moving: Nature’s ingenious motor – University of Auckland
Scientists look into how some of the earliest life on Earth, bacteria, got moving.
Happy to see our work featured by @aucklanduni.bsky.social Constant molecular motion is essential to life. We’re unravelling the story of how life first got moving.
@phatmattbaker.bsky.social @nicholasmatzke.bsky.social @kacarlab.bsky.social
www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2025...
23.11.2025 21:32 — 👍 5 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
New Clone-FISH paper lead by former lab member Joelie Van Beek. Way to go, Joelie! 🎉🎉🎉 @environmicrobio.bsky.social
journals.asm.org/doi/epdf/10....
17.11.2025 22:50 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Amber, Morgan, and Ulises take a selfie in front of the Edward Aquifer well to be sampled.
New lab milestone: our 1st aquifer sampling on the books 😎 Can’t wait to learn more about the interesting microbes residing deep below us, so stay tuned! Much thanks to @edwardsaquifer.bsky.social for letting us tag along this week!!
Pictured: Amber Busboom and Ulises Rodriguez Cruz
05.11.2025 01:00 — 👍 8 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
🎉Lab welcomes new graduate students Allie Beyer and Kaleb Fisher from the UW-Madison Biophysics program. 🚀 Here’s to reaching for the stars together, Allie and Kaleb, welcome aboard! @uwmadscience.bsky.social
31.10.2025 18:51 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
🎉 Huge congrats to Holly Rucker for winning First Place in the Midwest Geobiology Conference Best Oral Presentation! 🏆 Amazing work, Holly! @uwmadscience.bsky.social @uwbact.bsky.social @hollyrucker.bsky.social #UWMad
31.10.2025 18:45 — 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Since I heard the idea that "surveillance used to be a side-effect; now it is the product" in @techwontsave.us with @hypervisible.blacksky.app, I cannot help finding it everywhere I read. For instance, this is the new "Claude Memory" by Anthropic.
24.10.2025 08:23 — 👍 74 🔁 23 💬 1 📌 2
Pave the way for the new doctor in the house!
Huge congrats to "Dr. Evrim Fer", who absolutely crushed her PhD defense today! 🥳
We’re so proud of you and can’t wait to see where your next chapter takes you. Way to go!👏✨
#PhDDefense #Science @uwmadisonmdtp.bsky.social @uwmadscience.bsky.social
15.10.2025 22:08 — 👍 9 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
...it was precisely this kind of existential curiosity that Betül Kaçar talks about that drove Elio throughout his life ...and kept him alive until the very end.
14.10.2025 15:53 — 👍 13 🔁 4 💬 3 📌 1
YouTube video by The Well
The case for useless knowledge | Betül Kaçar
The case for useless knowledge by Betül Kaçar. In this 3 minute video she explains why the simple act of being curious and asking questions (without needing a reason) is one of the most powerful things a human can do. www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2k3...
08.10.2025 22:01 — 👍 13 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 1
❤️
14.10.2025 17:16 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
This Wednesday: Evrim Fer from @kacarlab.bsky.social dissertation defense seminar. Join us in-person or on Zoom!
13.10.2025 14:24 — 👍 6 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
I had a great time being interviewed for this!
10.10.2025 21:56 — 👍 4 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
YouTube video by The Badger Herald
Potential Biomarkers Found on Mars: The Search For Life
NASA may have just brought us closer to answering one of humanity’s biggest questions: What is life?
Our amazing student Holly Rucker @hollyrucker.bsky.social breaks down what Mars’ potential biomarkers mean for the search for life 🌌🚀
@uwmadscience.bsky.social
👇
www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6mQ...
10.10.2025 21:17 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 1
Out now! @elife.bsky.social
🔗 elifesciences.org/articles/105...
Nitrogenase is one of life's most essential enzymes.
We trace the evolution of over 5,000 extant & ancestral nitrogenase structures across billions of years.
Our full dataset is available for everyone to explore!
👉 nsdb.bact.wisc.edu
09.10.2025 15:25 — 👍 7 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
A call for caution in the biological interpretation of viral auxiliary metabolic genes - Nature Microbiology
This Perspective discusses virus-encoded auxiliary metabolic genes and provides a framework for the biological interpretation of these genes.
New paper alert! We suggest caution in the analyses of viral auxiliary metabolic genes and propose a new overarching term - 'auxiliary viral genes' (AVGs) to describe different types of such genes. @simrouxvirus.bsky.social #phagesky #Microsky www.nature.com/articles/s41...
27.08.2025 12:24 — 👍 74 🔁 37 💬 2 📌 2
Planetary microbiology: microbes, planets, and the search for life | Applied and Environmental Microbiology https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/aem.00241-25?af=R
01.10.2025 03:46 — 👍 4 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Structural evolution of nitrogenase over 3 billion years https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40934104/
12.09.2025 05:14 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Structural evolution of nitrogenase over 3 billion years
#nitrogenase #evolution #microbiology
@elife.bsky.social
elifesciences.org/articles/105...
21.09.2025 11:04 — 👍 12 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
Structural evolution of nitrogenase over 3 billion years
Previously, we identified the only dinitrogen reduction mechanism known to date as an ancient feature conserved from nitrogenase ancestors, which we directly tested by resurrecting and integrating synthetic ancestral nitrogenases into the genome of Azotobacter vinelandii (Garcia et al., 2023), a genetically tractable, nitrogen-fixing model bacterium. Here, we extend this paleomolecular approach to investigate the structural evolution of nitrogenase over billions of years of evolution by combining phylogenetics, ancestral sequence reconstruction, protein crystallography, and deep-learning based predictions. This study reveals that nitrogenase, while maintaining a conserved multimeric core, evolved novel modular features aligned with major environmental transitions, suggesting that subtle distal changes and transient regulatory adaptations were key to its long-term persistence and to shaping protein evolution over geologic time. The framework established here provides a foundation for identifying structural constraints that governed ancient proteins and for situating their sequences and structures within phylogenetic and environmental contexts across time.
Amazing work from @kacarlab.bsky.social on the evolution of my favorite enzyme -> Structural evolution of nitrogenase over 3 billion years
16.09.2025 19:56 — 👍 5 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Leaving Barcelona. What a fun week, lots of learning, lots of thinking. I hope to catch up with all of you soon (next ESEB?)!!
#eseb25
22.08.2025 16:07 — 👍 5 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Hey everyone! Do you want to know about why nitrogenase is one of the most interesting egg chicken problems in early life, and what's @kacarlab.bsky.social approach to understand it? Check my poster this afternoon (P03.117).
#ESEB25
21.08.2025 09:33 — 👍 9 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0
Full room on evolution, synthetic biology and the origin of life!!
To keep learning more, come visit our posters on Tuesday (Evrim Fer, p02.030), Wednesday (Katsumi Hagino, p03.253) and Thursday (me! p03.117)
#ESEB2025
18.08.2025 14:15 — 👍 11 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Hola from Spain! 🇪🇸
Excited to invite you to our session at #ESEB25:
“The Future Meets the Beginning: Synthetic Biology, Evolution, and the Origin of Life”
🗓 Monday 18
⏰ 2PM
📍 Room 131
Chairs: @brunocuevaszuviria.bsky.social, Evrim Fer & Katsumi Hagino.
Can’t wait to see you!
17.08.2025 17:05 — 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Tomorrow, Monday 18 at 2PM, join us at room 131 for "The future meets the beginning: Synthetic biology, evolution, and the origin of life", which I'll be co-chairing with Evrim Fer and Katusmi Hagino. Both amazing topic and speakers ! :-D #ESEB25
17.08.2025 15:39 — 👍 9 🔁 2 💬 2 📌 0
Lab members had a blast at the @proteinsociety.bsky.social annual meeting in San Francisco! 🎉 Huge congrats to grad students Evrim Fer and Kaustubh Amritkar for receiving travel awards, and to Kaustubh for also taking home a poster award 🏆 (shown here with our own Amanda Garcia).👏👏
13.08.2025 19:45 — 👍 5 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
My postdoc position is open again! If you’re interested and did not get your application in last time, please send one by end of this week! Start date asap, latest by end of Fall. ‼️
23.07.2025 02:39 — 👍 11 🔁 15 💬 0 📌 0
Very pretty! Loved using similar and such nice looking gassing manifolds when I was a postdoc in the Lovley Lab, back in the day… But, here’s a secret: you can build one with parts from Amazon for way less 💵 that works just as well 👌🏻😉
26.07.2025 22:50 — 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 2 📌 0
Postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich. Interested in all aspects of protein engineering and evolution.
In Memory of the Astronomer, Researcher, Educator, Communicator, Advocate, and Activist who taught us the Importance of Understanding Science.
CNRS charge de recherche (CR, Permanent)| geomicrobiologist | interested in biomineralization, Precambrian biogeochemistry, and eukaryotic fossils
Epigenetic Inheritance, Neuroscience & anything biology-related
https://www.odedrechavilab.com/
https://www.qedscience.com
Organizer of “The Woodstock of Biology”
TED: https://shorturl.at/myFTY
Huberman Lab Podcast: https://youtu.be/CDUetQMKM6g
mechanics | evolution | choanoflagellates
Between the Diz-Muñoz + Arendt labs (EMBL, Heidelberg) and Thibaut Brunet’s lab (Institut Pasteur).
PhD: mechanics in nervous system development @FranzeLab
Scientist at UW-Seattle. Excited about membrane biophysics and increasing access to STEM. Opinions my own.
Research fellow @aucklanduni.bsky.social
Structural phylogenetics #strphylo protein evolution, plant systematics
Geo- & astrobiologist at the University of Düsseldorf // co-evolution of #eukaryotes and the #Proterozoic biosphere // unrepentant Gaian and Margulis devotee
www.danielbradymills.com
Subsurface microbiologist/biogeochemist, runner, laugher, wife, parent, TED speaker, Wrigley Prof. at U. Southern California, she/her, got a book coming out in May 2025 called INTRAterrestrials: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth
Director, Scripps Inst. Oceanography & Vice Chancellor, UC San Diego. Opinions are my own.
Science writer and author of books including Bright Earth, The Music Instinct, Beyond Weird, How Life Works.
The official Bluesky account for the Biology Major @uwmadison.bsky.social. Find out more information on our website: biologymajor.wisc.edu.
Once you've graduated, we follow back!
Microbial ecologist
https://www.fiererlab.org/
Professor, Biology, Indiana University
Bacterial physiology and cross-feeding interactions
Artist: https://bit.ly/3oy86jf
Sheltering under solar panels.
Posts are my own.
Experimental evolution of viruses for basic science and evolutionary medicine at Yale Ecology & Evolutionary Biology.
Tweeting papers & news from our group. Acct managed by lab members.
Asst. Prof. at MCB UConn 🔬🧬🏳️🌈 (He/él)
#newPI Microbial Ecophysiology Lab
https://microbial-ecophysiology-lab.mcb.uconn.edu/
Mexican & Indigenous, 1st gen
#Methane #Microbes #Methanogen #Archaea #Microbiome #ArchaeaPower #OneHealth #Astrobiology #Proteins
Geomicrobiologist and Asst Professor at Stanford University interested in how microbial life affects global chemistry and climate. Microbial ecology, deep-sea ecosystems, single-cell measurements, stable isotopes, GHG cycling, extremophiles.
Scientist + Humanist + Pugilist.
"Tip your hat; pop the chain; short Joe Louis; then wipe his nose with the hook. It's that simple." (c) Brother Naazim Richardson
https://linktr.ee/chike98
