Lauren Queiss

🚨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 Cyanobacteria are the earliest known organisms that produced oxygen through photosynthesis, leading to the oxygen atmosphere that allowed the evolu...

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)

Giant DNA viruses encode a hallmark translation initiation complex of eukaryotic life Giant DNA viruses encode a cap-binding complex homologous to eIF4F, the defining translation-initiation complex of eukaryotes. The viral cap-binding complex is required for viral protein synthesis and...

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 In contrast to living organisms, viruses were long thought to lack protein synthesis machinery and instead depend on host factors to translate viral t…

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

Eukaryogenesis in light of an expanded catalogue of Asgard genomes. a, Simplified, scaled timeline spanning from before the Last Asgard archaea Common Ancestor (LAsCA) to today. Thin bands mark predicted time ranges of relevant events (for example, GOE), thicker bands represent processes (for example, eukaryogenesis), and brackets indicate the period shown in b. The timeline further highlights milestones, including potential early eukaryotic fossils60 and the modern-day co-occurrence of Heimdallarchaeia and Alphaproteobacteria observed in this study (interaction likely originated earlier).

Fig. 1 | Expanded genomic diversity of Asgard archaea. a, Maximum-likelihood phylogeny based on 47 non-ribosomal markers (NM47)using the WAG + C10 + R4 model with 100 nonparametric bootstrap pseudoreplicates, including 869 Asgardarchaeota MAGs and 309 outgroup genomes. The blue branches (lower right) indicate the new Asgardarchaeota classes, Ranarchaeia, and the recently proposed Asgardarchaeia4. The concentric rings denote (in to out): the predicted genome size, metabolic guilds based on Pfam clustering, sampling locations, and black stars on the outside mark MAGs added by this study. Asgard, Asgardarchaeia; Atabey, Atabeyarchaeia; Baldr, Baldrarchaeia; Frey/Jord, Frey/Jordarchaeia; Gerd, Gerdarchaeales; Heimdall, Heimdallarchaeaceae; Hel, Helarchaeales; Hermod, Hermodarchaeia; Hod, Hodarchaeales; Kari, Kariarchaeaceae; Loki, Lokiarchaeales; Njord, Njordarchaeales; Odin, Odinarchaeia; Ran, Ranarchaeia; Sif, Sifarchaeia; Thor, Thorarchaeia; Wukong, Wukongarchaeia. b, SR4-recoded phylogeny of the same genome set inferred with the model GTR + C60 + G and 100 nonparametric bootstrap pseudoreplicates (Methods). This updated catalogue constitutes a large increase in the medium- to high-quality publicly available genomes (completeness >50% and contamination and redundancy <10%) with 65.3% from the Guaymas Basin and 34.7% from the Bohai Sea. The encircled numbers represent MAGS added by this study. The scale bars in bothsubpanels represent the average number of substitutions per site.Map created in BioRender; Appler, K. https://biorender.com/147ieoc(2025).

Our work is published today: ‘Oxygen metabolism in descendants of the archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor’. This was a huge effort lead by @katyappler.bsky.social. Extremely grateful to have been a part of this amazing project! 😊🦠🧬

Links: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We just released #anvio v9, "eunice" 🎉

This version represents over 2,000 changes in the codebase since v8, increasing the total number of programs in the anvi'o ecosystem to 176.

Read the release notes:

github.com/merenlab/anv...

Visit our up-to-date web page:

anvio.org

Archaea may not be well known, nor well studied, but these microorganisms can live in the most extreme environments, but also right on our skin. They’re everywhere.

EMBL researchers are now exploring their unique ecosystem adaptability and link to evolution.

www.embl.org/news/science...

A quorum-sensing molecule from Pseudomonas aeruginosa induces defensive multicellularity in a coinfecting pathogen | PNAS Microorganisms commonly exist in polymicrobial communities, where they can respond to interspecies secreted molecules by altering behaviors and phy...

A quorum-sensing molecule from Pseudomonas aeruginosa induces defensive multicellularity in a coinfecting pathogen

-in PNAS from @anukharelab.bsky.social

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🔬🚨New preprint alert! 🚨🔬

We developed quantitative expansion microscopy (qExM) - a method to accurately count proteins in situ by combining expansion microscopy's improved labeling with statistical estimators borrowed from ecology

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#SuperResolution #CellBiology

Widespread and intron-rich mirusviruses are predicted to reproduce in nuclei of unicellular eukaryotes - Nature Microbiology Environmental metagenomic explorations show that Mirusviricota lineages lack essential replication and transcription genes and contain spliceosomal introns, suggesting nuclear reproduction.

Check out our latest paper on mirusviruses, one of the most remarkable new groups of protist viruses - extremely diverse, carry lots of spliceosomal introns (including new homing introns) and are at the evolutionary crossroads between tailed phages and herpesviruses! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Rare microbial relict sheds light on an ancient eukaryotic supergroup - Nature The discovery of an unusual protist named Solarion arienae, which has a mitochondrial genome with some intriguing features, provides insight into the early radiation of eukaryotic groups.

#NatMicroPicks

A new protist with remnants of ancient mitochondrial DNA 🧬🦠

The eukaryotic tree of life grows with the addition Solarion arienae - a unique and peculiar protist species

#MicroSky

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How do cells adapt morphology to function? In a 🔥 preprint by @zjmaggiexu.bsky.social , with @dudinlab.bsky.social and @amyweeks.bsky.social , we identify a self-organizing single-cell morphology circuit that optimizes the feeding trap structure of the suctorian P. collini. 🧵 tinyurl.com/4k8nv926

our next online seminar, this time with Anna Sophia Feix, on parasite-derived EVs in infection and immunity 😎 Please register here: donau-uni.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

So a big day for #microeukaryote #imaging. To finish "en beaute" a small video to share the behind the scenes of this first work. Such an exciting time to be a #marine #microbiologist !!

Congratulations @lqueiss.bsky.social 👏🎉😀

Lauren won the Best Poster Award at the Women in Electron Microscopy (#WeM) – Exchange and Networking event @fz-juelich.de

Pic: FZJülich/Kurt Steinhausen
www.mpi-bremen.de/en/Lauren-Qu...

#WomeninSTEM #marinescience #MachMINT @maxplanck.de #FemaleScience

Some years ago, we discovered a modern microbialite reef under conditions resembling primitive Earth 🌋

Now we show how seasonal extremes drive microbial shifts and mineralisation, offering a window into processes that shaped Earth’s first biostructures 🪨

www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02764-6

Hijacking a bacterial ABC transporter for genetic code expansion - Nature Bacterial ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters can be utilized and engineered to transport non-canonical amino acids into Escherichia coli for highly efficient synthesis of proteins with novel func...

🚨Our paper is out! 🥳
Hijacking a bacterial ABC transporter for efficient genetic code expansion.
Many congrats to everyone involved - a multi-year effort led by @taruniype.bsky.social @maxfottner.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

it all started years ago with a failed experiment
🧵👇 1/9

Ecological constraints foster both extreme viral-host lineage stability and mobile element diversity in a marine community Phages are typically viewed as very rapidly evolving biological entities. Little is known, however, about whether and how phages can establish long-term genetic stability. We addressed this eco-evolut...

Phages evolve fast, or do they?
In oysters, some stay identical for years.
With >1,200 phages & 600 Vibrio genomes, we reveal long-term stability and new mobile elements.
Proud of this collaborative work across our teams (Roscoff-UdeM and @epcrocha.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Balancing stability and flexibility when reshaping archaeal membranes.
buff.ly/4yqUdBj

Oceanic cyanobacterial photosynthesis is negatively affected by viral NblA proteins www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Compositional analysis of bacterial peptidoglycan: insights from peptidoglycomics into structure and function | Journal of Bacteriology Peptidoglycan (PG) is a crucial biopolymer in the bacterial cell wall that has been the subject of intense study since it was first isolated in the early 1950s (1, 2). Over the last 70 years, extensive research has expanded our understanding of the structure and function of this microbial biopolymer. Recent advances in mass spectrometry and bioinformatics have revolutionized PG analysis, enabling a comprehensive detection of individual components and their global composition within bacterial cells. Like genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics, peptidoglycomics is the non-targeted, non-biased detection of all elements that comprise the overall PG structure. Peptidoglycomic analyses can identify and monitor hundreds of potential compositional changes that occur within the PG structure of a cell. By comparison, traditional methods of analyzing PG composition only distinguish a relatively limited number of PG components. Therefore, peptidoglycomic approaches produce a detailed global overview of the PG structural elements and give unprecedented insight into the physiological function of this biopolymer within the bacterial cell.

Compositional analysis of bacterial peptidoglycan: insights from peptidoglycomics into structure and function | Journal of Bacteriology https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/jb.00359-25?af=R

Principal coordinate analysis of the particle-associated communities that increased in the free-living fraction in response to Tween treatments (P value < 0.01). The color of the particle-associated (triangle) shapes corresponds to the Tween treatment, as indicated by the key. The crosses indicate the centroid points for each treatment. Vectors represent increased PA-OTUs with significant relationships (P value < 0.01) to the ordination axes, which are driving the differences in PA-OTU community composition between Tween treatments. Red vector labels represent E-PA-OTUs that increased significantly (P value < 0.05) in the FL fraction in response to at least one Tween treatment relative to controls.

Marine particles harbor microbial communities. However, to study them, they must be separated from the particle. How? This #AppEnvMicro article outlines an optimized method using detergents to dissociate microbes from marine particles. Get the details: asm.social/2DG

Programmable antisense oligomers for phage functional genomics - Nature Establishing antisense oligomers as versatile, non-genetic tools to silence phage mRNAs opens applications in basic research and biotechnology, as shown by identifying essential factors for propagatio...

No Genetics? Try ASOs – A non-genetic approach to silence genes at the phage-host interface. We use it to study jumbo phage biology and anti-phage defence.
@jorg-vogel-lab.bsky.social @helmholtz-hiri.bsky.social
@uni-wuerzburg.de @helmholtzhzi.bsky.social
published now in @nature.com

Her story celebrates women in marine science and the fight to protect our blue planet — all from a small, storm-tossed island in the Irish Sea.

If you care about the ocean’s future, this one’s a tide worth catching. 🌊✨

📘 Spring Tides by Fiona Gell
🔹 Reviewed by Matthew Bunce FMBA

#MarineScience