Sonja-Verena Albers

We are happy to share our newest preprint on a novel strain of Ca. Lokiarchaeum ossiferum, that contains an active provirus, capable of excision and independent replication! We propose a novel virus family: Fylgjaviridae.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Bluesky Map Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!

bluesky-map.theo.io

I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

CsmR most probably integrates the signal from the quorum sensing system to regulate archaellum gene biosynthesis and genes involved in shape control.

This was a close cooperation with @curiousdina.bsky.social and Anita Marchfelder. @sshamphavi.bsky.social @weiwaer.bsky.social and Marten Exterkate. Thanks for the input, we learned a lot abaut regulatory processes along the way!

This work started as a bachelor project and @1nussi1.bsky.social and @felixgrunberger.bsky.social showed that CsmR is a very interesting regulator important for controlling motiliy and cellshape in Haloferax volcanii.

The preprint is out now: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Phosphorylation-driven conformational switching of the ArnA–ArnB complex involved in archaeal motility regulation
#microbiology #archaea #MicroSky #ArchaeaSky
doi.org/10.3389/fmic...

A reminder to sign up for the 2026 EMBO archaeal meeting im Cambridge: meetings.embo.org/event/26-arc.... Registration is open. We are looking forward to hosting you!

Congrats! It has been a pleasure to have you in the lab and I am lokking forward seeing what you will achieve in the future!

Ordering of cell cycle events by regulated proteolysis is not just for eukaryotes:
@buzzbaum.bsky.social et al define mechanisms underlying switch-like degradation of archaeal ESCRT-III CvdB in Sulfolobus
Thanks to @reviewcommons.org for another #RefereedPreprint
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

@archaellum.bsky.social lab reveals how #cdiAMP and 4 RCK proteins shape osmotic stress responses in H. volcanii 🧬🦠. In highly halophilic #archaea, c-di-AMP coordinates ion balance and cell volume—mirroring bacterial strategies for environmental stress adaptation.

👉 buff.ly/ApWkCtg

Nice to see our story on the bacterial archaellum as one of the #editorpicks of 2025!

Take advantage of this fantastic opportunity to become part of the SCALE community! Several professorships and group leader positions are available at Goethe University and FIAS. We are looking for professors in the fields of molecular microbiology, cellular biochemistry, and molecular biochemistry.

Calling all archaeal enthusiasts! 🔬🔥 From molecular machines to microbial communities, Archaea never fail to surprise us!
We are excited to announce the 2026 EMBO Workshop on the Molecular Biology of Archaea, 6–10 July in Cambridge, UK!
Sign up here: meetings.embo.org/event/26-arc...
#ArchaeaSky

An Asgard Archaeon (Lokiarchaeum ossiferum) growing and retracting its arms

Crawling motility of Lokiarchaeum ossiferum, our favorite Asgard Archaeon.

Charge segregation in the C-terminal linker of FtsZ enables Z-ring scaling with prokaryotic cell width Bacterial cytokinesis is orchestrated by the Z-ring, a cytoskeletal structure formed by treadmilling filaments of the tubulin-like GTPase FtsZ. During assembly, filament curvature must match the cell ...

Happy to share a new preprint from the lab: Marko became interested in whether the disordered linker of FtsZ might influence how the protein organizes into the Z-ring. And this led to some surprising findings!
Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

List of available cultures

Ecoli cells (Dapi, on left) expressing bacterial (center) and archaeal 16S rRNA.

Clone-FISH paper out: Manuscript/resource alert #microsky 🦠 We present a collection of 30 E. coli (CloneFISH) cultures, each carrying a plasmid for the heterologous expression of a (near) full-length 16S rRNA gene from one of 30 lineages of archaea, including 17 yet uncultured ones.

Call for Applications Early Career Rescue Fellowships. 14 postdoctoral Fellowships for researchers whose work is restricted due to political pressure in the USA. Deadline 9 January 2026

Together with @zukunftskolleg.bsky.social and Tübingen College of Fellows, FRIAS is offering #EarlyCareerRescueFellowships.
Open to researchers from all nationalities & represented disciplines | 1-7 years postdoc experience | 2 years btw 7/2026 and 11/2028
👉 uni-freiburg.de/frias/call-f...

Great opportunity to join Freiburg University as a Postdoc from abroad! Happy to help !

1/6
PhD /PostDoc positions available. Exploration of physiological functions of the cell fusogen Fusexin1 in Archaea.
In a collaborative project between the Albers lab (Freiburg) and the Podbilewicz lab (Technion) starting in January 2026.

We have wondered what a complex archaeal cell might look like ever since 2014. It’s been a long road (and the journey is far from over), but it’s a good time to pause for breath and look. These Asgard archaeal cells are a surprise! And that is the joy of being a cell biologist.

An Asgard archaeon with internal membrane compartments The emergence of eukaryotes from a merger between an archaeon and a bacterial cell ~two billion years ago involved a profound change in cellular organisation. While the order in which different featur...

An Asgard archaeon containing internal membrane compartments!! 😯
This will reshape our understanding of how the eukaryotic endomembrane system originated.
Congrats to @buzzbaum.bsky.social, @tbharat-lab.bsky.social and all ppl involved!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Genomic insights into antiviral defense systems in haloarchaea and their impact on virus susceptibility The ongoing evolutionary arm race between archaea and their viruses has led to the development of diverse defense systems against viruses. While recent computational approaches have uncovered many bacterial antiviral defense systems, the viral infection strategies and antiviral responses of archaea remain poorly explored. In this study, we identified antiviral defense systems encoded in the genomes of 20 recently sequenced haloarchaeal strains. These systems are representative of the broader repertoire of defense systems present across all 253 complete sequenced Halobacteria (class) genomes in the RefSeq database. Detailed analysis showed that these haloarchaea usually harbor multiple different defense systems, with a particularly high abundance of uncharacterized predicted defense systems against viruses (Phage Defense Candidates (PDCs)). To further explore the impact of anti-viral defense mechanisms on host range, an extensive virus-host pair screening was performed using a panel of known virulent viruses. By correlating the genomic defense profiles with observed viral infectivity and adsorption profiles, a weak correlation between the number of encoded defense systems and viral susceptibility was detected. Specifically, hosts infected by fewer viruses tended to encode a broader repertoire of antiviral defense systems, whereas those with fewer defense systems were frequently infected. It was found that the host range of haloarchaeal viruses is majorly determined by the availability of viral receptors, whereas the presence of anti-viral defense systems plays a smaller but significant role. These findings offer valuable insights into the evolutionary pressure shaping archaeal antiviral strategies and lay the groundwork for future functional studies of archaeal defense systems.

Genomic insights into antiviral defense systems in haloarchaea and their impact on virus susceptibility | bioRxiv https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.08.687337v1?rss=1

Archaeal cells whose DNA has been stained with a blue dye. Zoomed-in images of mutant cells that display chromosome segregation defects.

High-resolution images of DNA-protein complexes obtained with atomic force microscopy. Upon binding, the protein bridges distant sites, forming loops.

📢 Interested in #chromosomes 🧬 & #archaea thriving at the edge of life? PhD project in York,UK on how archaea pass on their genome to daughter cells.Friendly supervisors: me, @steve-quinn-lab.bsky.social & @georgerheath.bsky.social

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
📅 January 7, 2026
Please RP🙏thx!

Great collaboration with @guo-lab.bsky.social to determine an in situ architectural model of the Tad pilus machine. Be on the lookout soon for a preprint on the same topic by Grant Jensen and @viollierpat.bsky.social. #microsky

📢 Postdoc position: Cell Biology of Cyanobacteria

in my group, as part of the Excellence Cluster "Microbes for Climate" (M4C) in Marburg, Germany.

More information at shorturl.at/wNnDT (see Project 2)

🔗Apply at shorturl.at/VsEDl
📅Deadline: Nov 16, 2025

Please repost. #Postdoc

(2/2) Expansion microscopy (ExM) allows scientists to easily and inexpensively visualise cellular structures that are challenging to see with traditional microscopy.

Learn more about how EMBL researchers are using ExM to push the boundaries of the life sciences: www.embl.org/news/science...

We’re on the cover of @embojournal.org
Odin, from Norse mythology, emerges from the Odinarchaeota yellowstonii genome, holding FtsZ1 and FtsZ2 the ancestral twins of tubulin highlighting their evolutionary divergence in Asgard archaea. 👉 shorturl.at/n7iZE
#archaea #evolution #tubulin #cytoskeleton

Modeling glycans with AlphaFold 3: capabilities, caveats, and limitations Abstract. Glycans are complex carbohydrates that exhibit extraordinary structural complexity and stereochemical diversity while playing essential roles in

This is going to be one of the biggest, most important features of AlphaFold @alphafold.bsky.social if further improved! Glycobiochemistry needs this bestfriend! #glycotime

academic.oup.com/glycob/artic...

Applications closing tonight (midnight French time) !!!
Still a few hours to apply !!