Jürgen Strassert
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strassert.bsky.social
Jürgen Strassert
@strassert.bsky.social
interested in microbial eukaryotes; #protists #chytrids
https://www.tu.berlin/en/umbio/research/working-groups/group-strassert
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
Lab’s first paper is out!! We show the first structures of #Asgard #chromatin by #cryo-EM 🧬❄️
Asgard histones form closed and open hypernucleosomes. Closed are conserved across #Archaea, while open resemble eukaryotic H3–H4 octasomes and are Asgard-specific. More here: www.cell.com/molecular-ce...
October 28, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
New version of PR2 that now includes the eKOI coi database recently published.
Version 5.1.1 of the PR2 database has been released.

The major novelty is the inclusion of the recently published eKOI database (coi gene- doi.org/10.1093/data...) in the web interface. The 18S rRNA database is not changed so you can use 5.1.0 or 5.1.1 for metabarcode annotations
A novel taxonomic database for eukaryotic mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I gene (eKOI), with a focus on protists diversity
Abstract. Metabarcoding has emerged as a robust method for assessing biodiversity patterns by retrieving environmental DNA directly from ecosystems. While
doi.org
October 28, 2025 at 9:11 AM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
🚨 We’re hiring! 🚨 @bruzos.bsky.social lab is seeking a highly motivated #PostDoc & a #PhD student to investigate the marine transmissible cancers. 🧬🌊

#sciencejobs #jobalert #researchjob #cancer #marinescience #symbiosis #bioinformatics #MaxPlanck
October 20, 2025 at 6:19 AM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
Declining ocean greenness and phytoplankton blooms in low to mid-latitudes under a warming climate www.science.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs 🌊
Declining ocean greenness and phytoplankton blooms in low to mid-latitudes under a warming climate
Chlorophyll a is declining in low- to mid-latitude oceans, indicating reduced ocean productivity and fewer phytoplankton blooms.
www.science.org
October 21, 2025 at 4:44 AM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
Only two days left to apply for the open tenure track professorship in Computational Biology here in @uni-goettingen.de
uni-goettingen.de/en/700631.html
W2-TT-W3 Computational Biology - Georg-August-University Göttingen
Website of the Georg-August-University Göttingen
uni-goettingen.de
October 21, 2025 at 6:34 AM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
We have a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor position in Microbiology available!

Come and join great students and colleagues at Hofstra Biology. Please apply using the link below and/or spread the word!

hofstra.peopleadmin.com/postings/6542
Assistant Professor of Microbiology
hofstra.peopleadmin.com
October 14, 2025 at 9:20 PM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
Excited to share our new work on nanopore metabarcoding — showing how it can be used for protists and combined with short reads!
Led by my PhD student Małgorzata Chwalińska, with our team at @ibe-warszawa.bsky.social and @fabnot.bsky.social & Sarah Romac at @sbroscoff.bsky.social
#ProtistsOnSky
"Want to start using Nanopore technology to research protistan diversity? Check out our paper introducing a pipeline for creating OTUs from Nanopore metabarcodes — bridging the gap between short- and long-read metabarcoding." - Anna Karnkowska

doi.org/10.3897/mbmg...
October 14, 2025 at 2:53 PM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
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....
October 14, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
Latest from ours: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

This is two stories in one: a case study/cautionary tale on developing genetic tools in new organisms, and the first hint at a gene regulatory network for choanoflagellate multicellular development (which turn out to involve a Hippo/YAP/ECM loop!) A 🧵
October 5, 2025 at 10:35 AM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
⚠️New paper ➡️ isolating >600 freshwater microbes using dilution-to-extinction and low-nutrient, lake-mimicking media.

🤯Expands cultured diversity to ~70 % of detected genera and enables physiological studies of streamlined oligotrophs.

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#protistsonsky
Bringing the uncultivated microbial majority of freshwater ecosystems into culture - Nature Communications
A large fraction of aquatic bacteria remains uncultured. Here, the authors cultivated 627 strains of abundant freshwater bacteria from 14 European lakes, thus generating a collection that includes many previously uncultured, oligotrophic bacteria that may serve as model organisms.
www.nature.com
October 5, 2025 at 11:26 AM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
New preprint!

Ever wondered why only a fraction of genomes encode CRISPR immunity? 🧬 🦠

Turns out CRISPR is rarely beneficial against virulent phages, being most beneficial against those for which resistance mutations are rare!

An epic effort by Rosanna Wright

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Resistance mutation supply modulates the benefit of CRISPR immunity against virulent phages
Only a fraction of bacterial genomes encode CRISPR-Cas systems but the selective causes of this variation are unexplained. How naturally virulent bacteriophages (phages) select for CRISPR immunity has...
www.biorxiv.org
October 6, 2025 at 6:27 AM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
Now completely published :)
Really proud of this paper led with Karla at @cstairs.bsky.social lab.
doi.org/10.1093/isme...
Anaerobic breviate protist survival in microcosms depends on microbiome metabolic function
Abstract. Anoxic and hypoxic environments serve as habitats for diverse microorganisms, including unicellular eukaryotes (protists) and prokaryotes. To thr
doi.org
September 27, 2025 at 6:50 AM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
We are hiring the second cohort of EvoReSt PhD students. If you are interested in deep evolutionary questions, checkout:
www.uni-goettingen.de/de/687607.html
Apply here:
obp.uni-goettingen.de/de-de/OBF/In...
August 25, 2025 at 6:22 PM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
We have several open positions in my group, funded from the ERC Grant on the Early Sequestered Germline of Fungi. We search broadly for applicants at both PhD and master-level, with a dedicated interest in fungal evolutionary biology. Please forward and RT!
Find the positions here: su.varbi.com
Lediga jobb vid Stockholms universitet
Jobb
su.varbi.com
September 7, 2025 at 1:13 PM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
How do microbes become permanent partners? 🌊🔬🦠 Check out our new study published in Current Biology showing how cyanobacterial genomes evolve step-by-step into endosymbionts of diatoms. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
@currentbiology.bsky.social @mehrshmali.bsky.social
August 30, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
Apply now to the Workshop on Genomics 2026, which will take place 11-24 January, in the beautiful town of Český Krumlov, Czechia. Deadline: 20th of October, but applicants will be informed on a rolling basis. Spread the word among colleagues! 🙆🏽‍♀️ evomics.org/apply-worksh... #evomics2026
September 2, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
Our paper describing our new improved GFmix models for phylogenetic inference that capture site-and-branch heterogeneity in amino acid composition.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Modeling site-and-branch-heterogeneity with GFmix
Phylogenetic trees are often inferred from protein sequences sampled from diverse taxa across the tree of life. The compositions of these amino acid sequences may be heterogeneous across both sites an...
www.biorxiv.org
August 12, 2025 at 12:53 PM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
The first paper from my PhD is out now! doi.org/10.1111/jeu....

We describe a new photosynthetic #Paulinella species from a brackish beach in British Columbia 🇨🇦

Big thanks to the co-authors Maia Palka and @alive-in-the-ocean.bsky.social, and my supervisor @fburki.bsky.social

#protistsonsky
August 18, 2025 at 11:36 AM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
Check out our new preprint all about Pirsonia, a tiny killer of bloom-forming Coscinodiscus diatoms!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#protistsonsky #marinemicrobes 🌊🔬
July 30, 2025 at 3:04 PM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
We have a postdoc opening for a protistologist with biophysics inclinations to join our @hfspo.bsky.social project! (focus will be on characterising the morphology, ultrastructure and behaviour of excavates) #protistsonsky

Apply by Sept 17th (RTs appreciated!)
jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...
August 6, 2025 at 7:19 PM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
Check out our paper to explore how the evolutionary history of SELMA supports or challenges various hypotheses on the origin of red complex plastids.

academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...
July 23, 2025 at 8:43 AM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
Promethea = PROvora + MEteora + HEmimastigophora. The new supergroup, unifying previously “orphan” lineages with gene-rich mitogenomes. Position of #telonemids is still uncertain. #protistsonsky tinyurl.com/yk9xkt49
July 24, 2025 at 2:50 PM
Reposted by Jürgen Strassert
BEHOLD! One of Earth's greatest lineages of life: the lil wiggle arm guys, Meteora.

These single-celled critters, originally found in deep-sea sediments, are SO DIFFERENT from other lifeforms on Earth that they're likely in their own kingdom (as in, the Animal Kingdom, the Plant Kingdom etc). 🧪🌿
July 10, 2025 at 8:06 PM