Christian M. Zmasek, PhD

Quick reminder that you're part of a movement now: the ✨anti-Big-Tech movement ✨ Welcome.

Scientists @schmidtocean.bsky.social have filmed a giant #jellyfish in the #deepsea off Argentina's Atlantic coast. The phantom jellyfish (Stygiomedusa gigantea) was discovered at a depth of around 250 meters. The tentacles of these creatures can reach up to ten meters in length tinyurl.com/rk6tjd3c

This bobtail squid burrowing into the sand is already adorable, but please watch till the very end!

It sticks out its little arms and earnestly sprinkles sand over itself 🦑𓂃◌𓈒𓐍

LJI scientists develop new approach to fighting many viruses at once New vaccine design pipeline could protect against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants and more

Dr. Alba Grifoni (@albagrifoni.bsky.social) and her team share new research that could help us fight many viruses at once—and stop emerging diseases in their tracks! bit.ly/45EYs6C

#virology #immunology #Tcells #health #medicine #STEM #SanDiego

#SigmaXiAwards @lji.org
Congratulations to our 2025 Procter Prize recipient, La Jolla Institute for Immunology's Alessandro Sette.
Read More: ow.ly/qFn350WHSR7
Awards: ow.ly/pTxi50WHSR6
IFoRE: ow.ly/jubN50WHSR8

Highly conserved Betacoronavirus sequences are broadly recognized by human T cells The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the critical need for vaccine strategies capable of addressing emerging viral threats. Betacoronaviruses, including …

Highly conserved Betacoronavirus sequences are broadly recognized by human T cells

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Deep origin of eukaryotes outside Heimdallarchaeia within Asgardarchaeota | Nature Research on the morphology, physiology and genomics of Asgard archaea has provided valuable insights into the evolutionary history of eukaryotes1–3. A previous study suggested that eukaryotes are nested within Heimdallarchaeia4, but their exact phylogenetic placement within Asgard archaea remains controversial4,5. This debate complicates understanding of the metabolic features and timescales of early eukaryotic ancestors. Here we generated 223 metagenome-assembled nearly complete genomes of Asgard archaea that have not previously been documented. We identify 16 new lineages at the genus level or higher, which substantially expands the known phylogenetic diversity of Asgard archaea. Through sophisticated phylogenomic analysis of this expanded genomic dataset involving several marker sets we infer that eukaryotes evolved before the diversification of all sampled Heimdallarchaeia, rather than branching with Hodarchaeales within the Heimdallarchaeia. This difference in the placement of euk

223 metagenomes reveal eukaryotes' deep origin outside Heimdallarchaeia within Asgardarchaeota, reshaping the evolutionary timeline dramatically! PMID:40335687, Nature 2025, @Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08955-7 #Medsky #Pharmsky #RNA #ASHG #ESHG 🧪

A huge day for mapping in life science!
—the mammalian brain, most extensive yet (10 papers @nature.com journals)
nature.com/articles/s41...
@alleninstitute.bsky.social
—a comprehensive map of the human cell->sub-cellular
nature.com/articles/s41...
—complete ape genomes
nature.com/articles/s41...

Incredible close-up of colourful crab spiders — March’s best science images The month’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.

When Nature does a photo roundup, it’s always worth a scroll. March’s edition is packed with mind-blowing REAL shots that capture the beauty, weirdness, and wonder of science 🧪—no AI needed.

Case in point: this gorgeous shot of two courting crab spiders. Just one of many stunners. 💘

Molecular and Cell Biology of Symbiosis | Marine Biological Laboratory This is an immersive research-based course designed to teach basic concepts, open research questions, and facilitate state-of-the-art experimental approaches in symbiosis research.

For grad students and postdocs: We'd love to see you at the Molecular and Cell Biology of Symbiosis course at the Marine Biological Labs this summer! Application deadline is Apr 14, so apply soon. Please share with anyone who might be interested!
www.mbl.edu/education/ad...

A long-term evolution experiment for whole-genome duplication The Multicellularity Long Term Evolution Experiment (MuLTEE) unexpectedly becomes the longest-running polyploidy evolution experiment, shedding light on how whole-genome duplication can arise, persist...

2/46 I highly recommend reading Kai’s “Behind the Paper” blog.

communities.springernature.com/posts/a-long...

It does a lovely job of telling a story of surprise discovery, inspiration, and the coordinated work of a dozen people as Kai raced against the graduation clock to get this project done

New paper led by Chase Brownstein and with Alex Dornburg on the early evolution of acanthopterygian fishes is out in the journal Evolution! https://academic.oup.com/evolut/advance-article/doi/10.1093/evolut/qpaf040/8051721 Using DNA sequences from loci sampled from across the genome, we show that the three lineages closest to Percomorpha, a clade which contains everything from basses to anglerfishes to tunas to gobies, are not informative for understanding the ecology of the ancestral percomorphs. We show that Beryciformes, a clade containing the reef-associated squirrel- and soldierfishes and the deep-sea whalefishes, alfonsinos, and bigscales, is the sister to Percomorpha, and chart how popular Sanger-sequenced genes provided an unclear resolution to this issue. We show that the 3 major groups that form the sister lineages to percomorphs (Holocentridae, Berycioidei, Trachichthyiforms), all have recent origins. These clades, as well as their habitat preferences and characteristic features, evolved after the asteroid impact that killed the non-avian dinosaurs 66 millions years ago. What does this mean? First, it makes us question the ID of isolated & poorly known fossils as living beryciform and trachichthyiform genera. This study would not be possible without support from the Yale Peabody Museum. Genbank, supported by the National Institute of Health (NIH), is an invaluable resource that allows us to store the new data from this manuscript and helped us expand the taxonomic sampling of our phylogeny!- Tom Near

Cenozoic evolutionary history obscures the Mesozoic origins of acanthopterygian fishes

@chasedbrownstein.bsky.social et al. 2025, Evolution

Alt text by senior author Tom Near explains the significance of this new tree

#Teamfish #ichthyology

Flies play too, researchers find In a recent study, scientists at Leipzig University have for the first time demonstrated play-like behaviour in flies. They found that fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) voluntarily and repeatedly ...

Researchers find that fruit flies play too [via Uni. of Leipzig] 🧪🐝🎠⚗️

"...genetic, neuronal and biochemical factors [] influence the fruit fly’s playful behaviour"

www.uni-leipzig.de/en/newsdetai...

#fruit #fly #drosophila #melanogaster #play #carousel #agency #playful #behavior #invertebrates

Cheap blood test detects pancreatic cancer before it spreads The deadly cancer is often not found until it has spread to other parts of the body.

Potential game changer test. Prognosis for pancreatic is usually terrible because it is often stage 4 when discovered. 🧪

Early detection of pancreatic cancer by a high-throughput protease-activated nanosensor assay A high-throughput, noninvasive, rapid protease-activated nanosensor identifies patients with pancreatic cancer in a small volume of blood.

A different kind of Pac-Man! An innovative, rapid nanosensor assay to help diagnose early pancreatic cancer in people at high-risk (PAC-MANN)
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A line drawing of Darwin sitting in a chair stroking his beard. By Henry Furniss (1854 - 1925)

Happy Darwin Day!

To celebrate, the National University of Singapore released a collection of historical depictions of Darwin and of his and Wallace's theory of evolution by natural selection.

I like this portrait by Henry Furniss (1854 - 1925).

See: www.wivb.com/business/pre...

🧪

Learning the language of life with AI In 2021, a year before ChatGPT took the world by storm amid the excitement about generative artificial intelligence (AI), AlphaFold 2 cracked the 50-year-old protein-folding problem, predicting three-...

Learning the language of life with A.I.
@science.org
In today's essay, I review the phenomenal progress in foundation models of DNA, RNA, proteins, ligands, cells, their interactions, the Virtual Lab, and the aspiration for the Virtual Cell
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

These animals evolved to be ‘ultrablack’—here’s why An ant that disappears into the forest floor, a bird that demands attention from mates—for these animals, an inky black exterior is an evolutionary advantage.

These animals evolved to be ‘ultrablack’ — here’s why 🐈‍⬛️◼️🧪

An ant that disappears into the forest floor, a bird that demands attention from mates — for these animals, an inky black exterior is an evolutionary advantage

www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

How our gut microbiome regulates sugar preference nature.com/articles/s41...

X-ray image of a comb jelly.

What is reverse development, and how does it help the comb jelly survive adverse conditions? In the latest Science Sessions podcast, Joan Soto-Angel and Pawel Burkhardt describe a comb jelly that can reverse its development to an earlier stage of life. Listen now: www.pnas.org/post/podcast...

Running "Smashing Spider Myths" sessions for highschoolers in San Mateo today. My little spider ambassadors are ready to go! #Spiders #SciComm #Science #Education

This is a Podura aquatica and a female Sminthurides aquaticus who are, not surprisingly, chilling out at the edge of my pond. Their body ratios are so different and show off how unusual P.aquatica is. Amazing. #springtail #chaosofdelight #collembola #macro #macrophotography #pondlife #cute

...and here's a Primer by Alejandro Couce, also in @plosbiology.bsky.social plos.io/4fby0D8

We'd like to thank our generous sponsors for their support of the International SynBYSS Conference. Your commitment enables us to bring together a diverse and dynamic community of experts, innovators, and thought leaders in synthetic biology, creating an exceptional experience for all attendees.

Oreodonts are extinct mammals that looked similar to pigs and sheep, but were more closely related to camels. They are the most commonly found fossil in the White River Badlands in South Dakota, and this exceptional specimen from our collection shows an oreodont curled up inside its burrow.

Oreodonts are extinct mammals that looked similar to pigs and sheep, but were more closely related to camels. They are the most commonly found fossil in the White River Badlands in South Dakota, and this exceptional specimen from our collection shows an oreodont curled up inside its burrow.

Enhancer cooperativity can compensate for loss of activity over large genomic distances Thomas, Feng, et al. introduce a synthetic platform that allows the building of complex regulatory landscapes. Integrating the same enhancer at different distances from a promoter uncovered that activ...

two excellent papers on enhancer-promoter distance. Revisiting a classic unsolved problem. www.cell.com/molecular-ce... www.cell.com/molecular-ce... Wysocka and @chribue.bsky.social labs

This is a pretty interesting paper. Anglerfishes colonized the deep sea and then radiated into every weirdo shape. Was it adaptive radiation (yet in a generalist environment), or something else? 🧪🦑

Nicolas Svetec, David Begun, and I wrote a review article about de novo genes. If you are interested in this topic please take a look at this final open-access version at AnnualReviews
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Mummy of a juvenile sabre-toothed cat Homotherium latidens from the Upper Pleistocene of Siberia - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Mummy of a juvenile sabre-toothed cat Homotherium latidens from the Upper Pleistocene of Siberia

#ICYMI: Our own Dr. Emily Lindsey remarks, "This is truly an incredible find! It has the potential to shed light on all kinds of questions we rarely get to interrogate in #paleontology like sabertooth cat coat color and aspects of their biology. -- Thread.

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

#LECA