Miguel Gómez-Raya
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miguelgrv.bsky.social
Miguel Gómez-Raya
@miguelgrv.bsky.social
Postdoc in the Cell Biology and Virology of Archaea Unit @pasteur.fr

Archaea is the coolest domain of life! 🔬🦠

PPU PhD @pasteur.fr, Mart Krupovic
MSc Microbiology @helsinki.fi, Mikael Skurnik
BSc Biomedicine @UB.edu
Pinned
Elated to have our pre-print now published in @natcomms.nature.com #ArchaeaSky #Microbiology #MEvoSky
rdcu.be/euila
Our main results stay the same: S. islandicus follows a cell cycle akin to that of some eukaryotes, like the budding yeast, with cellular processes cycling similarly.
old🧵cited below👇
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
Check out our latest paper on mirusviruses, one of the most remarkable new groups of protist viruses - extremely diverse, carry lots of spliceosomal introns (including new homing introns) and are at the evolutionary crossroads between tailed phages and herpesviruses! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Widespread and intron-rich mirusviruses are predicted to reproduce in nuclei of unicellular eukaryotes - Nature Microbiology
Environmental metagenomic explorations show that Mirusviricota lineages lack essential replication and transcription genes and contain spliceosomal introns, suggesting nuclear reproduction.
www.nature.com
November 28, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
🚀New preprint from our lab!
I am very excited to finally share what has been the main focus of my PhD for the past almost 3 years! It is about viral dark matter and a powerful tool we built to shed light on it. 🧬💡
Continue reading (🧵)
November 20, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
What is the best strategy to win any contest?

Eliminate your opponents of course.

Recently, my friend @fernpizza.bsky.social showed how plasmids compete intracellularly (check out his paper published in Science today!). With @baym.lol, we now know they can fight.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
November 20, 2025 at 10:12 PM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Intracellular competition shapes plasmid population dynamics
From populations of multicellular organisms to selfish genetic elements, conflicts between levels of biological organization are central to evolution. Plasmids are extrachromosomal, self-replicating g...
www.science.org
November 20, 2025 at 9:42 PM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
How do cells adapt morphology to function? In a 🔥 preprint by @zjmaggiexu.bsky.social , with @dudinlab.bsky.social and @amyweeks.bsky.social , we identify a self-organizing single-cell morphology circuit that optimizes the feeding trap structure of the suctorian P. collini. 🧵 tinyurl.com/4k8nv926
November 18, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
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.
November 17, 2025 at 2:36 PM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
Thermophiles don’t just survive heat, they thrive in it. 🔥

They provide heat-stable enzymes, insights into early Earth, and tools for biotech.

Our new thematic issue in #FEMSMicrobiolEcol captures how diverse this field is. Explore the collection👉 buff.ly/kD8fmOL
November 14, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
Any #archaea #archaeasky lab out there interested in having their Natrialba species sequenced on ONT r10 up to about 3Kx read depth for free? I'll send back annotated assembly, methylation data and raw signal files. I need at least one more species for a paper. Feel free to DM!

🧫🦠🧪
November 13, 2025 at 5:00 AM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
The most common #methanogen in the human gut, Methanobrevibacter smithii (aka Methanocatella smithii), is the microbe of the month in @cp-trendsmicrobiol.bsky.social
@sgribaldo.bsky.social
#microbiology #archaea #GutMicrobiota #GutMicrobiome
November 10, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
📢 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!
November 9, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
An Asgard archaeon with internal membrane compartments

Brilliant study led by @fmacleod.bsky.social and Andriko von Kügelgen. Tight collaboration with @buzzbaum.bsky.social and lab. Congrats to all authors!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
November 7, 2025 at 10:44 AM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
Dive into our November issue featuring:

🪆nested archaeal symbioses
🌱microbiota driven drought responses in plants
🏗️ BAM complex in Bacteroidota
💨microbial fermentative growth in the gut
🍸hospital-specific phage therapy cocktail

and much more..!

www.nature.com/nmicrobiol/v...
November 3, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
This paper has been a must! Great collaboration with @mkrupovic.bsky.social and @yifanzhou.bsky.social, a N&V by a legend of halophilic archaea tinyurl.com/yc3dcv72, and one picture of one of our expeditions to Dallol making the cover of the November issue of @natmicrobiol.nature.com

rdcu.be/eLtCH
November 2, 2025 at 5:52 PM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
🚨Our collaboration with @centriolelab.bsky.social & @gautamdey.bsky.social is out today in @cp-cell.bsky.social
We show that #Expansion #Microscopy is a broad-spectrum modality for Euks, enabling 3D phenotypic maps rooted to phylogeny.
#ProtistsOnSky #SciComm #SciSky

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
October 31, 2025 at 2:42 PM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
Lab’s first paper is out!! We show the first structures of #Asgard #chromatin by #cryo-EM 🧬❄️
Asgard histones form closed and open hypernucleosomes. Closed are conserved across #Archaea, while open resemble eukaryotic H3–H4 octasomes and are Asgard-specific. More here: www.cell.com/molecular-ce...
October 28, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
Viruses and virus satellites of haloarchaea and their nanosized DPANN symbionts reveal intricate nested interactions

Out now in Nature Microbiology, by Yifan Zhou, Mart Krupovic & colleagues.
@mkrupovic.bsky.social
@yifanzhou.bsky.social
@deemteam.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Viruses and virus satellites of haloarchaea and their nanosized DPANN symbionts reveal intricate nested interactions - Nature Microbiology
An exploration of the viromes of haloarchaea and their ultra-small DPANN symbionts reveals plasmid-derived satellites of viruses from both archaeal groups, highlighting the complexity of nested symbio...
www.nature.com
October 20, 2025 at 7:46 PM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
Check out our paper on intricate nested interactions between viruses and virus satellites of haloarchaea and their nanosized DPANN symbionts. Excellent collaboration with @deemteam.bsky.social, @anagtz.bsky.social and Michail Yakimov
Free access link: rdcu.be/eLtCH
🧵 by @yifanzhou.bsky.social 👇
October 17, 2025 at 10:28 AM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
Our paper on chromosome segregation in the archaeon Sulfolobus Acidocaldarius has been published in PNAS! This has been a great collaboration with @joeparham19.bsky.social and the rest of @buzzbaum.bsky.social's team. Stay tuned for more to come!😉 @istaresearch.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
Temporal and spatial coordination of DNA segregation and cell division in an archaeon | PNAS
Cells must coordinate DNA segregation with cytokinesis to ensure that each daughter cell inherits a complete genome. Here, we explore how DNA segre...
doi.org
October 16, 2025 at 8:53 AM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
Persistent viral #infections in #insects are not as harmless as once believed. @salehlabparis.bsky.social &co show how such infections in #FruitFlies alter survival, reproduction, behavior & gene expression, revealing the hidden costs of #viral persistence @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4olpuXm
October 13, 2025 at 1:08 PM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
So happy to see this in print! Led by the brilliant (almost Dr.) @castellosanjuan.bsky.social, with the amazing guidance of @rubengonzalez.bsky.social & @jarednigg.bsky.social.
We used to think persistent infections were harmless… but our latest work shows otherwise. Read it to learn more!
Persistent viral #infections in #insects are not as harmless as once believed. @salehlabparis.bsky.social &co show how such infections in #FruitFlies alter survival, reproduction, behavior & gene expression, revealing the hidden costs of #viral persistence @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4olpuXm
October 13, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Reposted by Miguel Gómez-Raya
Our work on ribosome hibernation in archaea is out!
We identified Hib, a new hibernation factor broadly distributed across archaea.
Check out the preprint 👉 biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.11.676729v1
(1/🧵)
October 13, 2025 at 4:26 PM