Fabien Burki

Fantastic #protistsonsky

New paper out! We reconstructed amino acid and lipid metabolic pathways in Rhogostoma and relatives (Cercozoa) from transcriptomes. Even very similar-looking species differ considerably, and some pathways appear incomplete, suggesting dependence on their prey. doi.org/10.1016/j.ym... #protistsonsky

Call for Papers! This Special Issue aims to showcase cutting-edge research presented at the Protistology Open meeting in Prague, as well as high-quality articles closely related to the scientific themes of the meeting. #protistsonsky

Crochet cell surface #protistsonsky

I try to do just that in my AE work. I feel like sending again to reviewers has become standard, but it wasn’t like that before right? Say 15-20 years ago

PhD position in arctic protists at the Natural History Museum in Oslo #arctic #marine #protists #diversity #ecology #metabarcoding

Congrats

Are you an ISOP member? Did you know one of your membership benefits is FREE publishing in the Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal... #protistsonsky

Sad to have missed this meeting

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #protistsonsky

I have put this program online. I use it mostly for teaching about alignments, though it is a genuine aligner wrapper, as well as having a ProbCons-like aligner itself. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zljs...

Thanks to the committee for selecting this paper. Great surprise and particularly happy for Anders. This was part of his PhD thesis.

Postdoc opportunity! Join PERKFresh project and explore Perkinsea diversity, ecology & host–parasite interactions in freshwaters 📍 University of Warsaw ⏰ Deadline: 6 Nov 2026 🔗 euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/466845 #protistonsky #postdoc

4 years fully funded in a very fun department!

PhD-position ALERT! Interested in the genomics of local adaptation and the evolution of niche breadth? 🪲🧬🪲🧬🪲🧬🪲🧬🪲🧬 Come join me and @gmkov.bsky.social at @animecol-uu.bsky.social, Uppsala University, by applying here: uu.varbi.com/en/what:job/... Deadline 1st of November!

Here's a fun thing! Prof. Mike Hickerson @hickerlab.bsky.social has created Phylodiet, an app that reveals "How Much of the Tree of Life is on your plate": mjhickerson.github.io/phylodiet/ap... Enter your meal, and see how the ingredients are related. #phylogeny #TreeOfLife #Evolution

Drawing on existing knowledge and success stories from the community, researchers are looking to tackle major technical barriers in protist sequencing, including extraction, cell lysis, and DNA amplification methods. 🦠🧬 #protists #sequencing

#protistsonsky (not to mention protistsonfire)

Discovery of an Undocumented Symbiosis Between Arcellinida and a Flagellate Using Single-Cell Transcriptomics - Ani et al. (2026) Free link: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/QBTIVR... #ProtistsOnSky

21627 applications. Nothing to celebrate here. Impossible to evaluate fairly & safely. Neither the science (too diverse & possibly LLM generated) nor the soft criteria (likely LLM generated). Without an interview stage - a security risk! marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/whats-new/ne...

I'm a huge fan of #AquaticFungi, but do you know what else are amazing, important, and understudied? #Protists. I'm having a protist-filled Friday, starting with the fantastic ongoing defense of soon to be 'Dr.' @annewalraven.bsky.social of the @fburki.bsky.social lab. Check out her fantastic work 🎉

Thank you for having me! Such a beautiful visit to Uppsala so far, with great scientific conversations (my favourite thing) and great running down tree-lined paths (my second-favourite thing).

@mixotrophe.bsky.social is in da house. First for a fantastic seminar today, and to lead the PhD defense as the opponent of @annewalraven.bsky.social tomorrow. Thank you so much for your visit

New #ISEPpapers! The colorless dictyochophyte Ciliophrys sp. Baltic has lost a plastid but hosts a bacterial endosymbiont www.nature.com/articles/s42... #Protists #Algae #Symbiosis #Bacteria #Microbes #Evolution

💯% going the right way. I’m excited that the @earlhaminst.bsky.social recognizes the critical importance of protists for science and society #protistsonsky

The RAxML-NG v2.0 preprint is out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... v2.0 features integrated model testing, fast branch support metrics, automatic parallelization, phylogenetic difficulty prediction, genotype evolution models, to name but the most important features. And it is A LOT FASTER of course

Well said

Are you interested in the nuclear envelope and are still lacking a dye for it? Try the lectin concanavalin A in #U-ExM! Together with @baukjeje.bsky.social, @gautamdey.bsky.social and @dudinlab.bsky.social and many collaborators sharing species with us we explored the versatility of this dye

#SymbioSky #ProtistsOnSky

Our paper describing two new photosynthetic Paulinella species is out today in JPhycol! This is the kind of work I love to do and even it though took many years to finish, we had a lot of fun stomping around together in the marsh! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #protistsonsky

I was late to the party, but it was super fun to contribute to this project. And what a beautiful result. And I got to see my first IRL paulinella, see the dedication and leadership of @couchmicroscopy.bsky.social, and make new friends! Bonus [probably] P. murrayi rolling around while dividing.

I am extremely happy to announce that I have been awarded an @erc.europa.eu ERC Starting Grant to lead the ProtistEye project! We will be diving into the function, architecture, and diversity of eye-like structures across different protists to better understand their evolution. Stay tuned for more!

Yay

🚨 New preprint alert! 🚨 Choanoflagellates reorganize their global cytoskeletal architecture within seconds to explore confined microspaces. This is the main PhD work of the amazing @maitefreired.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... A tread 🧵⬇️

Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences is excited to announce new leadership and a bold vision for the future of the Single Cell Genomics Center (SCGC). SRSs Nicole Poulton and Julia Brown are now jointly leading the state-of-the-art facility. https://www.bigelow.org/news/articles/2026-09-01.html

Warm congratulations @annewalraven.bsky.social on this big achievement. This is the nailing of the PhD thesis ahead of the defense

What's that? You wish we had more data on those bizarre dinoflagellates WITH EYES? Have no fear! With @protistwtmostest.bsky.social, Gordon Lax, and @pjkeelinglab.bsky.social, who also have eyes.

If some of you are still wondering why we screen randomly purchased antibodies in ExM? Well, cuz we randomely find antibodies labelling key organelles and structures across many species...

Indeed: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #protistsonsky

My new book, Phylogenetic Biology, is now published. Available online for free at dunnlab.org/phylogenetic... . Physical copies can be purchased at shop.lightningsource.com/b/085?params... or your favorite bookstore.

Predator of #RedTide plankton reveals unusual bioluminescence today.ucsd.edu/story/ruthle... #Bioluminescence of the heterotrophic dinoflagellate Polykrikos kofoidii onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #Protists #Algae #Plankton #Dinoflagellates #ProtistsOnSky

Symbiotic capacity in a changing ocean: emerging questions around phytoplankton interactions- Zwahlen & Vincent 2026 - Trends in Ecology & Evolution www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

A new preprint from the lab! "Green algal symbionts are stably retained and provisioned in the dark despite a clear physiological cost" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Freaking finally! A massive compilation of data that sat on various desks for almost a decade is finally out. On the positive side, gave me time to learn expansion microscopy and make Fig 1 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Can't wait to hear from this meeting. Our lab will show first LOPIT data on glaucophytes (Cyanophora) #protistsonsky