Ben Larson

A Practical Approach to Study Uncultivated Protists Using Single‐Cell Techniques for Electron Microscopy Protists represent a significant portion of eukaryotic diversity with a wide range of ecological roles, lifestyles, and diverse morphological traits. Despite their widespread importance in ecological....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
#protistsonsky

Comparative Genomics of Unicellular Eukaryotes (San Feliu, Spain):
Abstract submission is open, with a short deadline! comparativegenomics2026.com

Join us as we explore the most diverse, surprising, and still largely uncharted branches of the eukaryotic tree.

Should I stay or should I swim Evolutionary pressures have shaped the feeding behaviours of aquatic microorganisms in alignment with the underlying physics of fluid flow.

Do microbes get more food by swimming or staying still? Turns out both work, and cilia help them pull in nutrients no matter the strategy.
buff.ly/vK3GmK5

Spotted today on the door of the new student office. Nice to see that they have already far surpassed me in artistic rendering of Euplotes ability.

New preprint! We show how mesoscopic nonequilibrium fluctuations in active gels emerge from the breaking of detailed balance at the molecular scale. Warning: Long technical paper ahead! Enjoy! @mpipks.bsky.social @ub.edu @ubics.bsky.social @icreacommunity.bsky.social

arxiv.org/abs/2601.20483

The day is finally here!! On behalf of all the co-organizers the Comparative Genomics of Unicellular Eukaryotes website is open.

comparativegenomics2026.com

Invited speakers will be added to the website in the coming weeks. Watch this (well, that^) space!

Predation by soil protists shifts bacterial metabolism from competitive to cooperative interactions Many soil protists are bacterivores, yet how protist predation reshapes bacterial metabolic interactions and functions remains poorly understood. Here…

Predation by soil protists shifts bacterial metabolism from competitive to cooperative interactions

-in @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social from Wu Xiong (Qirong Shen)
with Stefan Geisen, Alex Jousset

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#Addendum to 1970 paper, “CYTOPLASMIC FILAMENTS OF AMOEBA PROTEUS: I. The Role of Filaments in Consistency Changes and Movement,” includes eight video sequences originally recorded on 16-mm films. No technology was available at the time to include this data. 🎞️ rupress.org/jcb/article/...

#Actin

Happy to share my solo-authored Perspective "An Interpretation, Survey, and Outlook of Microbial Macroecology"! Making time these last few months to take stock of the patterns us microbial ecologists examine + models we invoke has been invaluable. Feedback welcome!

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Evolution of sensory systems underlies the emergence of predatory feeding behaviors in nematodes | PNAS Understanding how animal behavior evolves remains a major challenge, with few studies linking genetic changes to differences in neural function and...

How does evolution turn a harmless bacterial feeder into an active predator?
Our new study led by @marianneroca.bsky.social and published in @pnas.org explores how sensory systems were rewired to enable prey detection and predatory behaviour in nematodes.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🧵below!

What were the first animals? The fierce sponge–jelly battle that just won’t end For almost two decades, scientists have debated whether sponges or comb jellies are the first animal lineage. Now some are calling for a more harmonious approach.

On the importance of preprints, regardless of whether you are Team Sponge or Team Jelly:

'King says that she wishes she had posted the study as a preprint so that the errors could have been caught sooner.'

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The Romantic Discovery of Radiolaria in the Ocean Radiolaria are unicellular marine organisms (protists) that have been drifting in oceanic plankton for hundreds of millions of years. These mineral architects can build extraordinarily complex skelet...

The Romantic Discovery of Radiolaria in the Ocean onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #jcampubs 🌊

Nicole King will give a seminar in College de France on the 10th of february at 11.30, telling us about the secret lives of choanoflagellates. Don’t hesitate to join!

We are accepting applications for up to 3 Peggy Cotter Travel Awards ($1,650 each) to support early-career professionals attending ASM Microbe 2026. Apply by Feb 16, 2026 by emailing a 1-page letter to jegoff@esf.edu. ASM membership required; branch membership may be completed once that is live.

Excited to announce the re-establishment of the Central New York Branch of the American Society for Microbiology (CNY ASM)! Founded in 1921, revived in 2025 to support collaboration, inclusive programming, and microbiologists at all career stages! This is our official BlueSky account!

If you're interested in biodiversity in freshwater ecosystems, there's just a few days to apply for our PhD project: Ecological Surveillance using High-Throughput Quantitative Imaging at @uniofbath.bsky.social .

Deadline: January 16th!
Apply: is.gd/svXBcr

Image: www.planktoscope.org/how-it-works

Comparison of the cytoskeletal architectures of Toxoplasma and Chromera flagellates using ExM.

Isadonna Tengganu and Ke Hu develop transfection and ExM protocols for Chromera velia, enabling direct comparisons with its parasitic apicomplexan relative, Toxoplasma gondi.
journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Our research scientist Núria Ros-Rocher won the 1st prize @zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social microscopy contest with this beautiful choano colony www.zeiss.fr/microscopie/... 🥳

C. flexa might not yet be a genetic model, but it is now at least a calendar model, which counts for something. I think.

Thought-provoking work investigating general constraints on morphological complexity across diverse organisms. So much to learn about the origins and implications of evolutionary constraints on morphodynamic and geometric complexity of organisms.

Why does life explore so few of the forms it could possibly take? Using fractal descriptors, this #scienceadvances paper shows that Earth’s biosphere clusters around simple shapes, reflecting deep evolutionary constraints. @artemyte.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

electron microscopy picture of a microbial cell with multiple flagella

How a parasite gave up sex to find more hosts—and why its victory won't last phys.org/news/2026-01...

Host range expansion of asexual parasite can be explained by loss of adaptions in Muller’s Ratchet www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#Protists #Microbes #Parasites #Giardia #Evolution

Membrane editing with proximity labeling reveals regulators of lipid homeostasis - Nature Chemical Biology Coupling an optogenetic lipid-modifying enzyme with proximity labeling reveals protein networks and mechanisms regulating lipid homeostasis in the membranes of target organelles.

Thrilled to share our latest study, led by @reikatei.bsky.social, in @natchembio.nature.com! We began by asking a simple question—how do cells know if they have too much of a lipid in a particular membrane, and how do they respond to rectify this imbalance?
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
More info 👇

Summer program for workshops at the Aspen Center for Physics

With @tzerhan29.bsky.social, @jasnir.bsky.social and Asja Radja, we are thrilled to organize an Aspen summer workshop (Aug 9-Sept 6) on the "Physics of Collective Function in Active Living Matter". Applications are open at aspenphys.org/event/physic... till Jan 15!!
Please share and apply soon!

Fast label-free live imaging with FlowVision reveals key principles of cancer cell arrest on endothelial monolayers - The EMBO Journal The rapid, transient, and unpredictable nature of interactions between circulating cells and the endothelium challenges the investigation of these events under flow conditions. Here, we developed an i...

Delighted to share the latest paper from the lab
"Fast label-free live imaging with FlowVision reveals key principles of cancer cell arrest on endothelial monolayers"

Amazing work driven by @follainga.bsky.social with contributions from many.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Excited to share Alison's @alisonkickuth.bsky.social paper from the lab out in @nature.com this week! We uncovered how a mechanical ratchet mechanism drives cytokinesis in early #zebrafish embryos. Read more in this thread 🧵 and at www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🤩
@poldresden.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de

If you are considering where to publish new research on extracellular/non-autonomous/geometric/physical cause and effect in development, consider our @dev-journal.bsky.social special issue, with @rashmi-priya.bsky.social!

Key challenges in evolutionary cell biology. This schematic illustrates four central challenges in the field: (1) integrating cell biology with evolutionary theory and experimental evolution, (2) bridging the genotype–phenotype gap, (3) identifying and developing new model systems, and (4) incorporating ecological context into evolutionary cell biology. Each quadrant highlights a conceptual hurdle that must be addressed to advance the discipline.

Also in Issue 24:
- Research Highlights on peroxisomes, talin, TP35INP2, MYO1F & MRTFs
- Editorials on @biologists.bsky.social & JCS
- Interviews with Mole and @kkostova.bsky.social
- Evolutionary cell biology comes of age
- Opinion on GLUT4 trafficking
journals.biologists.com/jcs/issue/13...

This delicate sponge has a remarkably clever survival strategy.🪝✨️⁠
⁠
Most sponges filter small plankton and bacteria from the water and pump them through their bodies. But the harp sponge (Chondrocladia lyra) uses small hooks along its vertical branches to trap and eat larger prey.

Here is the link to download the PDF of my course#5 on Biological computation. I present & discuss Self-tuning, Adaptation and Learning in biological (non-neuronal) systems, in particular during embryonic development.
This course contains various personal ideas/proposals.
tinyurl.com/hcpwsbtm

Interested in the MBL Physiology Course and want to learn more before you apply?

Join our Virtual Open House on Tues, Jan 6, 2026 | 2–3 PM ET to meet the team, hear what the course experience is like, and get your questions answered.

🔗 Register/Join: https://go.mbl.edu/r5q