Lauren Queiss

What happens when two viruses coinfect the same host? Check out the first publication of my PhD, where we describe two new viruses from an extremophilic system! www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Somewhere, over the rainbow 🌈 (at the @biozentrum.unibas.ch), Sofie & Wojciech discovered how special cyanobacteria adapt to far-red light 🚨 by completely remodeling their photosynthetic proteins and membranes 🌱. An exquisite #TeamTomo study that spans scales and introduces hyperspectral CLEM. 🌎🌊🌾🔬🧪

Beneath every wastewater treatment plant is a hidden world of microbial heroes. From bacteria-packed flocs to protozoa and nitrifiers, these tiny organisms clean our water, remove pollutants, recycle nutrients, and help protect public health every single day grupos.eez.csic.es/imili/wp-con...

Happy World Phage Day to all who celebrate... ... delighted to share new work led by Jacopo Marchi, Chadiga Khalek & joint w/Remy Chait on stable coexistence of phage with migrating bacteria driven by the forces of infection, lysis, and chemotaxis. A 🧵 at the interface between known & unknown.

🚨 New preprint 🚨 We’ve discovered millions of viruses from sequencing data but we don’t always know who they infect. Our new tool, VHAMSTeR generates broad virus host predictions across the tree of life (prokaryote, plant, animal, fungi and protist hosts) A thread 🧵👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The biogeography of giant viruses and interactions with Eukaryotes across European lakes www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our story about molecular adaptive traits of hyperthermostable archaeal nitrogenase is now out in @natcomms.nature.com !🦠🔍 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our paper on the dynamics of Asgard archaea (Promethearchaeota) is now out in Nature! Huge thanks to the reviewers for helping make the manuscript stronger. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Two “Lokis” stained for Lokiactin (FastAct, magenta), reaching toward each other to celebrate 🎉 #archaea

Our description of fire amoeba, 𝘐𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘦𝘣𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘴, is now online at Cell! Thanks @oliverio.bsky.social and amazing team for questioning the limits of eukaryotes! 🔥 www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

at first a preprint, then in STC ( smallthingsconsidered.blog/schaechter/2...) ...and now out in 𝘊𝘦𝘭𝘭...

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

Just a **few** (aka 25!) more eukaryotic phyla discovered/proposed! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Nice work @tedersoo.bsky.social @vmikk.bsky.social & all

(archaeal) cell divisionists take note 👇 no, the diderm 𝘐𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘰𝘤𝘤𝘶𝘴 did 𝗻𝗼𝘁 invent the nucleus, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 something pretty similar to 'closed mitosis' (as in yeast). look @sbulgheresi.bsky.social ! #MicroSky #Archaea #ArchaeaSky

Amazing Earth-changing microbes: ancient cyanobacteria oxygenated our planet. Through photosynthesis, their tiny cells triggered the Great Oxidation Event ~2.4 billion years ago. Even today, ocean microbes produce about 50% of the oxygen we breathe. grupos.eez.csic.es/imili/wp-con...

Why did some #viruses evolve to be #giants while others did not? Our perspective piece on this topic with Eugene Koonin. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Excited to share the final version of this great project! Oxygen production as an electron overflow pathway in ammonia-oxidizing archaea www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #archaea #oxygen #AOA #nitrification #physiology

Online now: Engineered probiotics block arsenite absorption in the gastrointestinal tract

Salty water flowing through Antarctica’s Blood Falls contains a distinct community of marine-specific microorganisms, providing evidence that the brine system beneath the glacier has a marine origin, according to a paper in Nature Geoscience. go.nature.com/3S6Csxw ⚒️🌎🧪

Excited to share what I've been working on with an incredible team! Visualisation of Asgard viruses on cell surfaces and vesicles, and a story of complex viral interactions. Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @brendanburns999.bsky.social @belindaferrari.bsky.social @xabivc.bsky.social

Amazing first first-author work by @juliameltzer.bsky.social. Shout out to the lab heads @brendanburns999.bsky.social @belindaferrari.bsky.social @kmichie.bsky.social and Debnath Gosal #archaea #phage #asgard #microsky

If you heard about anvi'o but never had a chance to figure out what it really is, please consider watching this 12-minute video by Iva Veseli: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fExu... It is a short and sweet introduction to what (and what not) to expect from anvi'o 😇

Quantifying phage-host dynamics using droplet microfluidics doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Bacteriocins in archaea and archaeocins in bacteria. @romainstrock.bsky.social surveys the the exchange of molecular weaponry between archaea and bacteria. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

PEONY: a global reference database of DNA viral (vOTU) sequences from viral size-fractionated metagenomes (viromes) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #jcampubs

I'm happy to share the first pre-print of out Lab! 🎉 Introducing ArchaeaHQ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We curated 21,644 genomes across all 4 archaeal kingdoms to bridge the gap in public datasets for computational biology What is inside ArchaeaHQ... (1/2)

Excited to share our new preprint! 🧬❄️ by brilliant @mdreimann.bsky.social and great collaborators! Using cryo-ET&EM, we reveal archaeal chromatin in a near-native state: variable-beads-on-a-string fibers shaped by growth phase and histone composition #ArchaeaSky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Super excited to see a new-to-me species in my sample this week! I believe this is Phalacroma rotundatum, a heterotrophic dinoflagellate. #marineplankton 🦑

A jumbo cyanophage encodes the most comprehensive ribosomal protein set in the known virosphere academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...

Do biofilms give an ecological advantage? Yes! A fantastic follow-up to our previous biofilm work in ammonia-oxidizing archaea: "Biofilm Lifestyle Drives Ecophysiological Niche Expansion in an Archaeal Soil Nitrifier" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Congratulations to all authors! #archaea

A new family of rolling-circle replication endonucleases widespread in archaeal viruses and plasmids #microbiology #virology #viruses #archaea academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Some photos from @guy_heath_ rock pooling at Hannafore, Looe! The elusive Rainbow sea slug (Babakina anadoni), found by @oops_robin 🌈

🔬 𝐓𝐎𝐃𝐀𝐘: 𝐢𝐕𝐨𝐌 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 𝐎𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 – 𝐒𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝟓: ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ 𝐆𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐕𝐢𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐬⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣🗓 25 Mar 2026⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ ⏰ 17:00 CET | 12:00 EDT | 09:00 PDT⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣𝐉𝐨𝐢𝐧: eu02web.zoom-x.de/j/6813954424... ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ 👉 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 for links & updates:⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ 🔗 isvm.org/ivom ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ #iVoM#Virology

Redox distribution of Asgard archaea and co-occurring taxa in microbial mats from an early Proterozoic ecosystem analog | bioRxiv https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.20.713109v1?rss=1

Horizontal gene transfer is often depicted as a process distributing pre-existing functions to novel genetic backgrounds. Yet HGT can also increase the rate of functional innovation after transfer. Here's a brief review on the topic: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... #evosky #microsky

Just published! at @narjournal.bsky.social . A new example of how gene order in bacterial genomes impacts cell physiology. Inthis episode we messed up with RNA polymerase genes! academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Final version of our last paper is out! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

One of the biggest challenges in microbial biotechnology? Unlocking the potential of non-model microbes and synthetic communities! Glad to share our review @sonjablasche.bsky.social @simonemozzachiodi.bsky.social @kiranrpatil.bsky.social @cambridgebiosci.bsky.social🧵(1/7) doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

#MicrobiologyMonday: Marine sediments store vast amounts of carbon. By infecting and lysing microbes, viruses shape biogeochemical cycling from coastal zones to the deep sea and influence long-term carbon storage. Get the story in #AppEnvMicro: asm.social/2Qv

🚨Preprint! Happy to share the research from my PhD “Genome delivery of a contractile tailed phage and its superinfection exclusion mechanism”. We use cryoEM to study the genome ejection of the phage T4, revealing how the tape measure protein regulates the process. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

➡️ preprint from the lab! Bacteria have loads of antiviral defences in their mobile genetic elements (MGEs). So when MGEs move between bacteria, the defences move with them, generating a fast turnover of defences in bacteria. But what about the antiviral defence turnover in the MGEs themselves? 🤔 🧵👇

Chiral gliding: Right-handed navigation of filamentous cyanobacteria | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Final version @nature.com of our paper describing unconventional multicellular development in a choanoflagellate inhabiting an extreme environment. A ton of new data since the first @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint (which we've kept updating). A brief 🧵 (carried over from the old place)

Paper and image credit: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

SNIPE is a widespread bacterial defence system that exploits the spatial organization of phage genome injection to specifically target viral DNA, distinguishing self from non-self in prokaryotic immune systems @nature.com @mitpress.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Yet another awesome single-phage paper from Ido Golding's lab #phagesky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A new preprint from the @archaeon-alex.bsky.social and Joey Davis (MIT) labs! We solved the structure of the ribosome from the archaeon Haloferax volcanii and discovered a new highly conserved ribosome hibernation factor that we named AHA (AMPKγ–HPF from Archaea) 🧵⬇️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

On the nature of the earliest known lifeforms #evolution #microbiology @elife.bsky.social doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

Giant DNA viruses encode a hallmark translation initiation complex of eukaryotic life - ScienceDirect https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867426000553?dgcid=rss_sd_all