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Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺 @ettema.bsky.social · 2d

OK, somebody should say it: the term 'one-stop-shop' has no place in academic research. Due to their diverse and exploratory nature, there is no single solution for scientific projects - else this would be routine research. RT if you agree, or feel free to argue otherwise below.

michael scott from the office is wearing a suit and tie and making a funny face .

ALT: michael scott from the office is wearing a suit and tie and making a funny face .

media.tenor.com

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Sonja-Verena Albers @archaellum.bsky.social · 21d

Happy to share that our story on the bacterial archaellum was published today in @natmicrobiol.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congrats to the authors: @sshamphavi.bsky.social @loumollat.bsky.social @mariejoest.bsky.social Najwa Taib and @sgribaldo.bsky.social

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Lorenzo Olivi @loreoliv.bsky.social · Aug 22

🧵 Our study on the elusive titration control mechanism of the replication initiator DnaA in Escherichia coli is now out on @natcomms.nature.com‬! @stephkoe.bsky.social
@hohlbeinlab.bsky.social‬ @nicoc-micsynmet.bsky.social @ettema.bsky.social‬ @mib-wur.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1038/s414...

The Escherichia coli replication initiator DnaA is titrated on the chromosome - Nature Communications

A DNA-binding protein, DnaA, regulates the initiation of chromosomal replication in bacteria. Here, Olivi et al. show that the bacterial chromosome sequesters DnaA in a growth rate-dependent manner, s...

doi.org

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ᐯIᑕTOᖇ ᑎIᘔET, ᗰᗪ @nizet.bsky.social · Aug 15

Saddened to learn of the passing of Moselio "Elio" Schaechter—Distinguished Professor at Tufts, SDSU and UCSD—humanist and visionary leader in the fields of microbiology and scientific communication—mentor, friend, and inspiration to me and so many others

Small Things Considered
Big Things Achieved

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ELIXIR Europe @elixir-europe.org · Jun 24

📣 ELIXIR has published a position paper on the importance of #OpenData infrastructure for 🌍 European competitiveness in life sciences.
Read the news 👉 https://loom.ly/22XW72k

#ResearchInfrastructure #Science4EU

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Stephan Köstlbacher @stephkoe.bsky.social · Jul 20

8.
GTDB r220 case study (led by @kassipan.bsky.social )
Applied WitChi to the archaeal GTDB r220 supermatrix:
• 5,869 taxa
• 55% of columns pruned
• Biased taxa: 95.1% → 2.3%
• Runtime: <2h on 4 cores
→ Known clades recovered — without using very complex C60 or CAT models

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Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺 @ettema.bsky.social · Jul 20

Our latest work, driven by the fabulous @stephkoe.bsky.social! WitChi takes care of compositional bias in large phylogenomic datasets! WitChi is fast, efficient and free, try it out!

With @kassipan.bsky.social and @danieltamarit.bsky.social

Stephan Köstlbacher @stephkoe.bsky.social · Jul 20

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🧵 New preprint out!
WitChi: a fast, open-source Python tool to detect, quantify & prune compositional bias in MSAs.
Lightweight, tree-free, scalable to 5k+ taxa... so we applied it to the GTDB archaea MSA.
#ArchaeaSky #MEvoSky #MicroSky
🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
💻 github.com/stephkoest/w...

WitChi: Efficient Detection and Pruning of Compositional Bias in Phylogenomic Alignments Using Empirical Chi-Squared Testing

Convergent evolution, where unrelated taxa independently evolve similar nucleotide or amino acid compositions, can introduce compositional bias into biological sequence data. Such biases distort phylo...

www.biorxiv.org

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Ben J Woodcroft @benjwoodcroft.bsky.social · Jul 16

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 🧵

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Wen-Cong Huang | 黄文聪 @wentsunghwang.bsky.social · May 23

#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...

Phylogenomic analyses reveal that Panguiarchaeum is a clade of genome-reduced Asgard archaea within the Njordarchaeia

The Asgard archaea are a diverse archaeal phylum important for our understanding of cellular evolution because they include the lineage that gave rise to eukaryotes. Recent phylogenomic work has focus...

www.biorxiv.org

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Daniel Tamarit @danieltamarit.bsky.social · May 14

New vacancy in my team!

PhD student position on microbial genome evolution, focusing on the evolutionary principles underlying bacterial genome architecture.

Please repost and share with talented MSc students in #evobio, bioinformatics or related :)

www.uu.nl/en/organisat...

#MEvoSky #MicroSky

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Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺 @ettema.bsky.social · May 14

haha, says he who uprooted microbial taxonomy ;-)

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Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺 @ettema.bsky.social · May 14

On this day, 10 years ago, my lab published the @nature.com paper reporting the discovery of the Asgard archaea (Lokiarchaeota at the time), revealing the archaeal nature of eukaryotic cells, and reshaping the Tree of Life. What a ride it has been since then... www.nature.com/articles/nat...

Complex archaea that bridge the gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes - Nature

This study identifies a clade of archaea that is the immediate sister group of eukaryotes in phylogenetic analyses, and that also has a repertoire of proteins otherwise characteristic of eukaryotes—pr...

www.nature.com

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Astra Demertzi @astrademertzi.bsky.social · Mar 20

Loki’s ever the trickster, but thankfully Thor knows how to put him in his place

#ArchaeaSky #Asgard #comics #comedy

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Gemma C. Atkinson @gemmaatkinson.bsky.social · Feb 25

Excited to share that our paper on locus visualisation tool LoVis4u is out! Entirely driven by fantastic PhD student Artyom Egorov @egorov.bsky.social academic.oup.com/nargab/artic...

LoVis4u: a locus visualization tool for comparative genomics and coverage profiles

Abstract. Comparative genomic analysis often involves visualization of alignments of genomic loci. While several software tools are available for this task

academic.oup.com

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Tom Williams @tweethinking.bsky.social · Feb 17

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.

Phylogenomic analyses reveal that Panguiarchaeum is a clade of genome-reduced Asgard archaea

The Asgard archaea are a diverse archaeal phylum that includes the host lineage from which eukaryotes evolved. Due to the importance of the Asgard archaea for our understanding of cellular evolution a...

www.biorxiv.org

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Laboratory of Microbiology @mib-wur.bsky.social · Jan 30

Hello Bluesky!

Follow us for updates on our Microbiology research here @w-u-r.bsky.social

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Andrew Roger @andrewjroger.bsky.social · Jan 27

In case some people have missed it, I'm re-posting a link to our paper on the Anaeramoeba-Desulfobacter symbiotic system. This is one of the papers from my lab that I'm most proud of...and a huge amount of the credit goes to @jonhultqvist.bsky.social !!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A unique symbiosome in an anaerobic single-celled eukaryote - Nature Communications

Symbiont-housing structures are well-studied in multicellular eukaryotes but rarely in unicellular protists. This study shows that low-oxygen-adapted Anaeramoebae have symbiosomes positioning sul...

www.nature.com

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Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺 @ettema.bsky.social · Jan 17

Nice, you give true meaning to being a rockstar scientist! 🤘

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Wallace Marshall @wallaceucsf.bsky.social · Dec 21

Delighted to share our new preprint on the cell biology and genome of Stentor pyriformis, a giant ciliate that maintains Chlorella endosymbionts in surface-associated microtubule baskets.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺 @ettema.bsky.social · Dec 19

Congrats Puri!

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Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺 @ettema.bsky.social · Dec 19

Jeepers! Congrats... I guess? 😉

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Vaughn Cooper @vscooper.micropopbio.org · Dec 12

With today's report outlining risks on mirror life www.science.org/doi/full/10.... many have asked:

Could mirror life survive in the wild?

Yes. While mirror life in the wild could have some significant disadvantages (like finding food it can digest), they do not appear to be insurmountable: 🧵

Confronting risks of mirror life

Broad discussion is needed to chart a path forward.

www.science.org

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Arjen Jakobi @cryotud.bsky.social · Dec 10

We have an opening for a 4 yr PhD interested in membrane remodelling and cryo-EM/ET of a minimal cell division machinery: edu.nl/bukan

You will be part of the EVOLF consortium in which 30 leading biochemists/biophysicists work together to explore if and how we can build autonomous synthetic cells.

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Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺 @ettema.bsky.social · Dec 6

... als de zondagsscholen maar niet gekort worden...

WOinActie.bsky.social @woinactie.bsky.social · Dec 6

Statement.

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Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺 @ettema.bsky.social · Dec 4

We descibed Hadesarchaea, now renamed Hadarchaea, not much later, in 2016 😉 www.nature.com/articles/nmi...

Genomic inference of the metabolism of cosmopolitan subsurface Archaea, Hadesarchaea - Nature Microbiology

Genomic reconstruction from hot spring sediment metagenomes show that 'Hadesarchaea' have streamlined yet metabolically versatile genomes, with genes involved in CO and H2 oxidation, with potential co...

www.nature.com

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