Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by John Burns

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 1d

I have to fan-girl for a minute here. My friend @rosvall-lab.bsky.social built an app to gather data on bird behavior during the 2024 solar eclipse. 10,000+ citizen scientists contributed (including my kids), and the resulting paper was published in Science today!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Total solar eclipse triggers dawn behavior in birds: Insights from acoustic recordings and community science

On 8 April 2024, a total solar eclipse disrupted light-dark cycles for North American birds during the lead-up to spring reproduction. Compiling more than 10,000 community observations and artificial ...

www.science.org

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Johana Rotterova @micrott.bsky.social · 1d

New paper out! 💌🔬Spirorhynchus verrucosus is a Muranotrichean and its sister has been livin' in the deep sea Santa Barbara Basin since the 90's! See them TUFTS!! Wonderful work of B Bourland & Cepicka Lab, R Beinart, & J Bernhard enabling deep sea sampling. Read h1.nu/spiror #ProtistsOnSky #MicroSky

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John Burns @burnsajohn.bsky.social · 1d

Wonderful!

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Sally Warring @sallywarring.bsky.social · 4d

A new preprint from us using a single-cell genome pipeline to investigate diversity of uncultured Bodo spp. flagellates.

We isolated 7 Bodo spp. cells from a single environmental sample and show that they represent 3 Bodo sp. each with a unique species of bacterial endosymbiont. #protistsonsky

Single-cell sequencing reveals unexpected genetic diversity among Bodo spp. flagellates and their bacterial endosymbionts

Bodo is a cosmopolitan genus of free living bacterivorous single-celled flagellates in the class Kinetoplastea. Members of genus Bodo are considered the closest free-living relatives to the parasitic ...

www.biorxiv.org

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Javier del Campo @fonamental.bsky.social · 3d

How to upgrade stolen organelles into permanent plastids: A comparative transcriptomic perspective www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... #protists #protistsonsky

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Javier del Campo @fonamental.bsky.social · 3d

Genome-resolved biogeography of Phaeocystales, cosmopolitan bloom-forming algae www.nature.com/articles/s41... #protists #protistsonsky

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Prakash Lab at Stanford @prakashlab.bsky.social · 3d

Life knows how to keep going - even if it’s freezing -15 degrees C 🥶 outside. AGU just covered our discovery of ultra resistant ice diatoms gliding into a world record! 🧪🔬Enjoy the story here:

eos.org/articles/ice...

Ice Diatoms Glide at Record-Low Temperatures - Eos

New observations reveal how microscopic organisms move through polar ice and illustrate how they may have evolved to thrive in extreme environments.

eos.org

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Jelena Godrijan 🫧❾🌊🦋 @godi.bsky.social · 2d

Microscopic, yet seen from space. Invisible, yet astronauts watch them glow.

Billions of tiny artists shape climate, feed the seas, and write history in calcium armor.

Meet them in 2 days.
#InvisibleHeroes #OceanGuardians #ClimateWarriors #protistsonsky
Illustrations: Rosie Sheward

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John Burns @burnsajohn.bsky.social · 1d

Go Gina!

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Johana Rotterova @micrott.bsky.social · 2d

With all the craziness in the world, good lab news bring real joy.💚🪇 With Breitbart's Lab help, long lab hours & determination not to give up, Gina has established a culture of the coral-eating Philaster!🪸🧫🔬I'm so proud of her!🥇 @gfullller.bsky.social
@miapi314.bsky.social #ProtistsOnSky #MicroSky

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Schmidt Ocean Institute @schmidtocean.bsky.social · 2d

In celebration of World Octopus Day, we wanted to revisit one of our favorite cephalopod sightings, the glass octopus — Vitreledonella richardi filmed during a month-long #PhoenixIslandsCoral expedition in 2021.

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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 2d

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

nyti.ms

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 2d

I adored writing this piece. It brings together several of the things preoccupying me right now, like chromatin organization and gene regulation. There's so much more to be said on that. Also, these marine critters look gorgeous.
www.quantamagazine.org/loops-of-dna...

Loops of DNA Equipped Ancient Life To Become Complex | Quanta Magazine

New work shows that physical folding of the genome to control genes located far away may have been an early evolutionary development.

www.quantamagazine.org

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Brian J. Enquist @bjenquist.bsky.social · 3d

This looks to be a fundamental theoretical advance by @jpodwyer.bsky.social et al. Using linkage disequlibrium-based Ne to back out σ² and then predict fluctuation sizes from a single temporal snapshot is a real advance for broad application 🧪🌐https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu6396

Genomic demography predicts community dynamics in a temperate montane forest

Species population sizes fluctuate over time, and these temporal dynamics play a key role in governing the maintenance of biodiversity. Although modeling approaches have been developed to characterize...

www.science.org

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Wallace Marshall @wallaceucsf.bsky.social · 3d

Are you in/near the SF Bay Area? Do you like Science? What about Festivals? Then you might want to check out the Bay Area Science Festival Oct 25. I’ll be there showing how single cells can learn!

www.bayareasciencefestival.org

Home - Bay Area Science Festival

Bring the whole family to experience 100+ jaw-dropping demonstrations, hands-on experiments, astounding games, behind the scenes lab tours, film screenings

www.bayareasciencefestival.org

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Chris Mah @echinoblog.bsky.social · 4d

oh wow! A stunning Porpita shot from @natalipaqpa on the other site

A blue bottle jelly with many tentacles emerging from it

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Katrina Velle @katrinavelle.bsky.social · 5d

PhD or Master's position available for Fall 2026!

Interested in how actin drives cell crawling, eating, dividing, or osmoregulation? What about pathogenesis of a brain-eating amoeba? Or eukaryotic evolution? If so, apply through my website: katrinavelle.wixsite.com/science/cont...
Please share!

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Jelena Godrijan 🫧❾🌊🦋 @godi.bsky.social · 5d

⚠️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

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.

www.nature.com

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Thibaut Brunet @thibautbrunet.bsky.social · 5d

Latest from ours: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

This is two stories in one: a case study/cautionary tale on developing genetic tools in new organisms, and the first hint at a gene regulatory network for choanoflagellate multicellular development (which turn out to involve a Hippo/YAP/ECM loop!) A 🧵

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Erin Green @erinrgreen.bsky.social · 6d

Job alert ‼️ UChicago Micro is hiring! Open to tenured/tenure track faculty at all levels in any area of microbiology. Come join our amazing and growing department. apply.interfolio.com/174404

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EvolDir @evoldir.bsky.social · 6d

UMass Boston seeks a tenure-track Assistant Professor in microbial ecology, starting September 1, 2026. Apply by December 1, 2025. Details: http://www.umb.edu/academics/csm/biology #job

Biology - UMass Boston

www.umb.edu

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でんか @k-hermit.com · 6d

I caught a shooting star💫

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 6d

Conventional wisdom says motherhood should wait for tenure as before you land a permanent post, #academia is just not that family friendly🙁

@carersinstemm.bsky.social are calling for change and to celebrate their new report, a Saturday🧵on parenting & academia! 1/9 👩‍🔬🧪🔭⚛️

ℹ️: carersinstemm.co.uk

From 2006. A younger and shell-shocked looking Catherine on a balcony holding a very tiny baby with the mountains of Vancouver in the background. The baby is so new, Catherine still has the pregnant bump.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 6d

So today I celebrate the work of @carersinstemm.bsky.social who are calling for systemic changes to funding, policy & culture to support carers in STEM. Funders & employers must listen if they recognise and value the importance of a diverse workforce.👩‍🔬🧪

Read their report 👉 carersinstemm.co.uk 8/9🧵

A Carers Guide for Institutions
1
Ensure institutional expense policy allows for the reimbursement of care-related costs including dependant and co-carer travel expenses.
2
Update and align institutional financial reimbursement policy with funder T&C’s relating to care-giving costs.
3
Establish institutional policy and disseminate to line managers and expense approvers to avoid inconsistent implementation and support.
4
Provide flexible carers grants for all staff and students with minimal administrative burden to flexibly support ad-hoc care and do not mandate online attendance.
5
Consider the competing demands of meeting sustainability goals and the requirement to support carers (e.g. trains, flight times on weekends).
6
Decouple measures of research impact and esteem from travel opportunities with updated academic guidance.
7
Allow for family-friendly travel accommodation options including booking outside of approved institutional travel providers.
8
Provide a per-diem (a daily allowance) option for complex trips to reduce
administrative burden on carers.
9
When hosting an event, ensure risk assessments and insurance policy align to allow access to those under the age of 18.

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John Burns @burnsajohn.bsky.social · 7d

#thisismylife