There's a PhD position now available with me in Bath, on the evolution of symbiosis. www.findaphd.com/phds/project.... The supervisory team also includes @anja1.bsky.social @phil-donoghue.bsky.social and others. NB, this is open both to UK-based students *and* to international students :)

Great new trait of #Methanoperedens archaea: Carbon monoxide metabolism in freshwater anaerobic #methanotrophic archaea #aom #anme
Egas @cuwelte.bsky.social et al #microbiology @ribesresearch.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Huang, @tweethinking.bsky.social, Sepang et al. use phylogenetic analyses to reveal that the Njordarchaeales and Panguiarchaeales constitute the new class Njordarchaeia within Asgard archaea.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf201

#evobio #molbio #archaea

New preprint up now!

Interested in the evolution of halophily within DPANN archaea we decided to investigate the sister phylum to the Nanohaloarchaeota, GTDB phylum EX4484-52, for which we propose the name Caliditerrarchaeota
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Authors: @anja1.bsky.social , @tweethinking.bsky.social, @chrisrinke.bsky.social, @ettema.bsky.social, @ssolo.bsky.social, @Lénárd Szánthó, @Zheng-Shuang Hua, @Maraike Probst

academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

Happy to share this one. We investigated the #phylogenetic placement and #genome_evolution of Pangui/Njordarchaea-unique #Asgardarchaea that might have undergone genome reduction...

Out in @natbiotech.nature.com: Metagenome taxonomy profilers usually ignore unknown species. SingleM is an accurate profiler which doesn't, even detecting phyla with no MAGs. Profiles of 700,000 metagenomes at sandpiper.qut.edu.au. A 🧵

Some relevant discussion bsky.app/profile/acri...
bsky.app/profile/arch...

4/ 🧵 This project is with @anja1.bsky.social, @tweethinking.bsky.social, @ssolo.bsky.social , @ettema.bsky.social,@chrisrinke.bsky.social, Zheng-Shuang Hua Maraike Probst and Lenard Szantho.

3/ 🧵 but challenging to place due to compositional heterogeneity, in line with Eme et al, 2023 (branch-wise or site-wise)....
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

2/ 🧵 that conflicting signals exist even within the same contigs but become more consistent with better fitting models. Using the best available model, our analyses suggest that the Pangui-Njordarchaeales are indeed members of the Asgard archaea

#Asgard,#phylogeny
1/ 🧵 Does MAGs contamination affect the placement of Njord as suggested by Zhang et al, 2025? www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Our updated analysis suggests instead... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

GTDB Release 10-RS226 (16th April 2025) has been published
gtdb.ecogenomic.org

Dating Bacteria is hard due to the lack of maxima. Assuming aerobes likely postdated the GOE gave us better resolved ages, but also surprised us, but not Dr Dayhoff, showing O2 use predated its atmospheric rise by 900 Mys and helped oxygenic photosynthesis to evolve. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Job announcement: a four-year postdoc position in phylogenomics at the Milner Centre for Evolution, Bath, with James Clark and me (I'm moving to Bath later in the year...). www.bath.ac.uk/jobs/Vacancy...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A new collaborative paper with Anja Spang, Wen-Cong Huang, @chrisrinke.bsky.social @ettema.bsky.social @ssolo.bsky.social Zheng-Shuang Hua Maraike Probst and Lenard Szantho. We investigated the phylogenetic position and metabolic evolution of Panguiarchaeum.