Ben Larson

We’ve extended the deadline!

Really excited to share our new paper in @nature.com! We uncovered how a physical instability of the cytoplasm coupled with the cell cycle drives cytoplasmic partitioning in early embryos #zebrafish #drosophila. Read more in this🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🤩
@poldresden.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de

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)

Wish I could attend!

MicroSEA (Microbial Sea Eukaryotes) course is a one-week, field-based summer school to train early-career researchers in the diversity, ecology, and single-cell biology of marine protists. MicroSEA course integrates lectures, field sampling, and lab-based practicals in advanced techniques, such as flow cytometry, microscopy, culturing, and molecular analysis. The main objectives of MicroSEA course are: Fostering a deep understanding of marine protist diversity, ecology and biology; Providing hands-on training in advanced single-cell methods that are not commonly available in university programs; Building participants' confidence in designing and conducting research projects from field to data analysis; Promoting international collaborations and peer networking among students and speakers/trainers. The course will take place at the Station Biologique de Roscoff - SBR (France) - 7th to 12th of June, 2026 (arrival on the 6th, departure on the 13th). 20 participants will be selected, including 10 from EuroMarine member institutes. https://opbc.sciencesconf.org/

Protist lovers: Please apply for a week of rhapsody! Learn by doing:

MicroSEA (Microbial Sea Eukaryotes) course is a one-week, field-based summer school to train early-career researchers in the diversity, ecology, and single-cell biology of marine protists. opbc.sciencesconf.org

#protistsonsky

Thought-provoking essay on the idea of the evolutionary continuity of cognitive abilities:
aeon.co/essays/the-s...
Historical context and current challenges are very nicely laid out, although I don’t quite agree with the Copernican revolution framing

Just published: chemotactic sperm cells become phototactic 💡- by loading photo-activatable second messengers. This allows to "reverse-engineer" chemotactic signaling dynamics and expose cells to signals they would never see in the wild. Honoured to be part of this collaboration with the Kaupp lab.

Phylogenomic tree of Cercozoa based on single-cell transcriptomes from 100 uncultured cells - BMC Biology Background Cercozoa are single-celled eukaryotes (protists) and are part of the supergroup Rhizaria. Cercozoans have vastly different morphologies and are defined by their phylogenetic affinity. While...

Great to see this paper in all its glory online: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A huge effort from Gordon and the team at @pjkeelinglab.bsky.social!

Phylogenomic tree of Cercozoa based on single-cell transcriptomes from 100 uncultured cells

@ubcbotany.bsky.social @science.ubc.ca

I like the one on the right...but I'm all for the predatory protist action shots

Help! We're struggling to choose between these two images of #Mesodinium #karmachamaeleon and its cryptophyte prey, one more "documentary" and one more "action shot," as cover image submissions (to a society journal). If you were an editor, which one would more likely catch your eye? #protistsonsky

Clonal-aggregative multicellularity tuned by salinity in a choanoflagellate - Nature The choanoflagellate Choanoeca flexa forms motile and contractile cell monolayers purely clonally, purely aggregatively or through a combination of both processes depending on environmental condi...

Clonal-aggregative multicellularity tuned by salinity in a choanoflagellate www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

@embl.org at its best: collaborative, open, transformative, and just the right amount of crazy. Dreaming of mechanistic cell biology *in the natural environment*? Dream no more, rent the AML.

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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jepb...

#WeFreezeOnTheBeach #ProtistsOnSky 🦠🌍🧪

Excited to share our new preprint exploring how Paramecium achieves diverse flow functions, i.e. feeding and swimming, simultaneously. This work was spearheaded by our ExM expert, PhD student Daphne Laan @daphnelaan.bsky.social :
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

BehaveAI turns patterns of movement into false colours that reveal an object or limb’s direction, speed and acceleration in a single frame, making it easy for deep learning neural nets to track objects and classify their behaviour. This demonstration shows a herring gull (Larus argentatus) taking off, with its most recent movements shown in blue, while green and red show its movements further back in time. Image credit: Jolyon Troscianko.

Despite advances, quantifying complex motion info remains challenging. @jtroscianko.bsky.social @kevinjgaston.bsky.social &co present BehaveAI, a #video analysis tool that sees motion as color, tracking animals & classifying #behavior in complex natural scenes @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4kTF1wX

Fun find in the free library at work: Greg's Microscope. Never knew this existed. Warms my heart to see some ciliates in a children's book.
I forgive them for referring to protists as animals...

Algal Swimming Patterns Change with Light Intensity In response to changes in illumination, a swimming microorganism reverses the direction of its circular trajectory by tilting its flagella’s planes of motion.

Some algae swim in circles, by exercising exquisite control of their breaststroke. And they switch direction under light of different intensity. Here's how. (No one is yet quite sure why.)
physics.aps.org/articles/v19...

Great to see our paper on light-intensity dependent swimming patterns in #Chlamydomonas out now in Phys Rev Lett. as an Editors' suggestion! With a nice commentary by @philipcball.bsky.social.

Chlamy actively modulate the beat planes of their #cilia!
journals.aps.org/prl/abstract... #protistsonsky

Fig. 2 Life cycle of Cyanidiophyceae.

✨ Paper spotlight ✨

(🧵 1/2) Fascinating single cell red algae: models for evolution and adaptation
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

#PlantScience

Just out @natcomms.nature.com Our new paper led by @karaslab.bsky.social with our help (Thalassiosira pseudonana).

Breaking the cell wall for efficient DNA delivery to #diatoms

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

Evolution of error correction through a need for speed Kinetic proofreading is a class of error-correcting mechanisms in biology that expend energy to avoid mistakes during replication, transcription, and translation. Proofreading is typically assumed to ...

@science.org Evolution of error correction through a need for speed | Science #evolution 🧬🔬 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Giant multicellular magnetotactic prokaryotes in marine sediments academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc... #jcampubs

Students & postdocs 👉 Apply by April 16 for our hands-on #TheoreticalBiophysics workshop featuring participant talks, tutorials & lively discussions.

✅ No registration fee
🍽️ Meals & hotel covered
✈️ Travel support available

Apply ➡️ janelia.news/THB26

@allysonsgro.bsky.social @zamakany.bsky.social

Our cells are experts at navigating inherently noisy and complicated environments.

EMBL researchers are using theoretical physics approaches to uncover fundamental principles behind how cells use complex information to self-organise.

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

Evolution of monoamine reception and its role in cellular contractility.

How do #sponges coordinate their bodies despite lacking neurons and true muscles?

We show that sponges use monoamines to control water flow in their canals — reminiscent of how adrenaline regulates blood vessels.

My PhD story, now on BioRxiv:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
#Evolution

@wallaceucsf.bsky.social, I feel like this is something you would have off the top of your head

A 🆕 #Ichthyosporea story
Led by@margaridaaraujo.bsky.social, in Co. @gautamdey.bsky.social & @hiralshah.bsky.social+🔥team across @embl.org & @sciencesunige.bsky.social
We finally have a look at what #microtubules are doing during #cellularization in #Sphaeroforma
▶️ tinyurl.com/MTSARC
#ProtistsOnSky

Our latest preprint: Together with the team of Jan Löwe, @danieltamarit.bsky.social and many others we discovered and characterized several Asgard tubulin genes and propose that microtubule architecture and dynamics evolved in Asgard archaea prior to eukaryogenesis
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Exciting announcement! My new department is launching a postdoc fellowship in quantitative biology. Fellows will be co-advised by two Bio faculty, one that is quant focused (not me) and one that is not (me???). I would love to co-sponsor a postdoc and build a collaboration so please reach out!

I appreciate the comments by Max Raas, Eelco Tromer and others on my paper published last year "Hypothesis that ancestral eukaryotes sexually proliferated without kinetochores or mitosis". However, I do not think their critiques can reject my hypothesis. For details, please read the paper. 1/n

De novo emergence of metabolically active protocells A continuous route from a disordered soup of simple chemical feedstocks to a functional protocell -- a compartment that metabolizes, grows, and propagates -- remains elusive. Here, we show that a homo...

Protocells from three inorganic salts, some formaldehyde and water?

They grow? They synthesise organic molecules of core biomolecular classes: amino acids, sugars, lipid-like motifs?

And, there are similar structures in today's oceans?

Yes! Read on.

arxiv.org/abs/2601.11013