Max Emil Schön
@maxemilschon.bsky.social
postdoc @ MPI-MR Heidelberg
evolutionary genomics of protists and their viruses
long reads, metagenomics
evolutionary genomics of protists and their viruses
long reads, metagenomics
Reposted by Max Emil Schön
Our study on the first rhodopsin channels known to respond to UV light is now published in PNAS! And they come from our favourite protists, apusomonads! #protistonsky
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
October 14, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Our study on the first rhodopsin channels known to respond to UV light is now published in PNAS! And they come from our favourite protists, apusomonads! #protistonsky
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
Reposted by Max Emil Schön
🚨 In case you missed it… our 4-year time-series analysis of Arctic Ocean viruses is out now!
Near-monthly samples — including through the dark, cold, polar winter ❄️ — using long-read metagenomics.
Short thread 🧵👇
Near-monthly samples — including through the dark, cold, polar winter ❄️ — using long-read metagenomics.
Short thread 🧵👇
July 31, 2025 at 4:22 PM
🚨 In case you missed it… our 4-year time-series analysis of Arctic Ocean viruses is out now!
Near-monthly samples — including through the dark, cold, polar winter ❄️ — using long-read metagenomics.
Short thread 🧵👇
Near-monthly samples — including through the dark, cold, polar winter ❄️ — using long-read metagenomics.
Short thread 🧵👇
Reposted by Max Emil Schön
Happy to see our latest work out in @molbioevol.bsky.social. We revisit the evolution of 5-methylcytosine across neglected eukaryotic supergroups, establishing an ancestral repressive role silencing genome invaders, both transposons and viral elements👾: academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-... 🧵 1/7
Repressive cytosine methylation is a marker of viral gene transfer across divergent eukaryotes
Abstract. Cytosine DNA methylation patterns vary widely across eukaryotes, with its ancestral roles being understood to have included both transposable ele
academic.oup.com
July 28, 2025 at 10:03 AM
Happy to see our latest work out in @molbioevol.bsky.social. We revisit the evolution of 5-methylcytosine across neglected eukaryotic supergroups, establishing an ancestral repressive role silencing genome invaders, both transposons and viral elements👾: academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-... 🧵 1/7
Reposted by Max Emil Schön
1.
🧵 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...
🧵 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
July 20, 2025 at 1:04 PM
1.
🧵 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...
🧵 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...
Reposted by Max Emil Schön
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
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
May 14, 2025 at 2:07 PM
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
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
Reposted by Max Emil Schön
First study from the lab is out! We describe ApuRs, a new family of microbial rhodopsins unique from apusomonads. ApuRs represent the first anion-conducting rhodopsin channels that can be controlled by UV light, offering potential as new optogenetic tools. #protistsonsky
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
👇
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
👇
April 18, 2025 at 9:07 AM
First study from the lab is out! We describe ApuRs, a new family of microbial rhodopsins unique from apusomonads. ApuRs represent the first anion-conducting rhodopsin channels that can be controlled by UV light, offering potential as new optogenetic tools. #protistsonsky
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
👇
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
👇
Reposted by Max Emil Schön
Happy to have played a small part in this. Prometheid is a proposed supergroup that contains previously deep orphan lineages.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#protistsonsky
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#protistsonsky
April 20, 2025 at 8:40 AM
Happy to have played a small part in this. Prometheid is a proposed supergroup that contains previously deep orphan lineages.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#protistsonsky
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#protistsonsky
Reposted by Max Emil Schön
Asgardarchaea & Alphaproteobacteria: key players for the assembly eukaryotic central carbon metabolism! Our new study reveals their gene contributions to glycolysis & TCA cycle, supporting synthrophic scenarios of eukaryogenesis.
rdcu.be/eb0aK
rdcu.be/eb0aK
Chimeric origins and dynamic evolution of central carbon metabolism in eukaryotes
Nature Ecology & Evolution - Analysis of the eukaryotic gene repertoires mediating central carbon metabolism identifies ancestral contributions from Alphaproteobacteria, Asgardarchaeota and...
rdcu.be
March 3, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Asgardarchaea & Alphaproteobacteria: key players for the assembly eukaryotic central carbon metabolism! Our new study reveals their gene contributions to glycolysis & TCA cycle, supporting synthrophic scenarios of eukaryogenesis.
rdcu.be/eb0aK
rdcu.be/eb0aK
Happy to see a large chunk of my PhD work published today in Cell Host&Microbe: www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...
We conducted fluorescence-activated single-cell sorting of active predatory protists in the ocean and recovered symbionts with cool evolutionary positions close to animal pathogens.
We conducted fluorescence-activated single-cell sorting of active predatory protists in the ocean and recovered symbionts with cool evolutionary positions close to animal pathogens.
February 14, 2025 at 11:02 AM
Reposted by Max Emil Schön
tidk: a toolkit to rapidly identify telomeric repeats from genomic datasets. #TelomericRepeats #AssembledGenomces #LongReads #Bioinformatics 🧬 🖥️
academic.oup.com/bioinformati...
academic.oup.com/bioinformati...
tidk: a toolkit to rapidly identify telomeric repeats from genomic datasets
AbstractSummary. tidk (short for telomere identification toolkit), uses a simple, fast algorithm to scan long DNA reads for the presence of short tandemly
academic.oup.com
February 10, 2025 at 10:18 PM
tidk: a toolkit to rapidly identify telomeric repeats from genomic datasets. #TelomericRepeats #AssembledGenomces #LongReads #Bioinformatics 🧬 🖥️
academic.oup.com/bioinformati...
academic.oup.com/bioinformati...
Reposted by Max Emil Schön
Interested in protist parasites? Want to learn some fun bioinformatics? Think this apicomplexan looks cool? Great! Come and do some protist genomics at @uniofbath.bsky.social!
We're advertising a fully-funded PhD studentship open to UK & International applicants!
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
We're advertising a fully-funded PhD studentship open to UK & International applicants!
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
January 21, 2025 at 3:56 PM
Interested in protist parasites? Want to learn some fun bioinformatics? Think this apicomplexan looks cool? Great! Come and do some protist genomics at @uniofbath.bsky.social!
We're advertising a fully-funded PhD studentship open to UK & International applicants!
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
We're advertising a fully-funded PhD studentship open to UK & International applicants!
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Reposted by Max Emil Schön
Stoked about this manuscript, many years in the making. We present an original resource of ~700 highly curated plastid MAGs of marine pelagic algae. Among these we found a novel deep branching group of plastid genomes; we informally call them leptophytes
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
January 19, 2025 at 8:32 AM
Stoked about this manuscript, many years in the making. We present an original resource of ~700 highly curated plastid MAGs of marine pelagic algae. Among these we found a novel deep branching group of plastid genomes; we informally call them leptophytes
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Max Emil Schön
Out today! Our review on the current evidence of protein import into endosymbionts/early organelles. We cover protists, insects and plant systems, so something for everybody!
With Mygg Stiller, Lena Kröninger and Eva Nowack.
#protistsonsky #SymbioSky
febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
With Mygg Stiller, Lena Kröninger and Eva Nowack.
#protistsonsky #SymbioSky
febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
FEBS Press
The acquisition of bacterial endosymbionts by ancient host cells followed by massive adaptation of the partners gave rise to mitochondria and plastids. Today, various systems with younger and less in...
febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
December 11, 2024 at 6:41 PM
Out today! Our review on the current evidence of protein import into endosymbionts/early organelles. We cover protists, insects and plant systems, so something for everybody!
With Mygg Stiller, Lena Kröninger and Eva Nowack.
#protistsonsky #SymbioSky
febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
With Mygg Stiller, Lena Kröninger and Eva Nowack.
#protistsonsky #SymbioSky
febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Reposted by Max Emil Schön
We found new #Crassvirales clades on #Antarctica (prospective families): @goncalopiedade.bsky.social's new paper on the viruses in Antarctic waters is out! Check out the manuscript (www.nature.com/articles/s41...) and Gonçalo's "Behind the Paper": communities.springernature.com/posts/unveil...
Unveiling the Hidden World of Antarctic Marine Viruses
communities.springernature.com
October 25, 2024 at 8:18 AM
We found new #Crassvirales clades on #Antarctica (prospective families): @goncalopiedade.bsky.social's new paper on the viruses in Antarctic waters is out! Check out the manuscript (www.nature.com/articles/s41...) and Gonçalo's "Behind the Paper": communities.springernature.com/posts/unveil...