Elisabeth Altrogge

teewatterss on Threads: “losing an hour on international women's day feeling very 75 cents on the dollar”

10/10 take. no notes

We're hiring a new lab instructor in Biology at @mountroyalu.bsky.social in Calgary, Alberta! If you love teaching practical skills to undergraduates and have experience with genetics, evolutionary biology and/or bioinformatics, please apply! mtroyalca.hua.hrsmart.com/hr/ats/Posti...

I think some of those might be Pokémon

Just figured out how to connect my two most time consuming projects which feels like the academic equivalent of debt consolidation

Eugenics is on the rise again: human geneticists must take a stand Scientists must push back against the threat of rising white nationalism and the dangerous and pseudoscientific ideas of eugenics.

I wrote about how we must stand and fight against the threat of eugenics.

Fueled by white nationalism and scientific racism, these beliefs are factually wrong and ethically abhorrent.

This fight includes supporting efforts to diversify our workforce & science. To stop now would be a deep betrayal.

Loss of pollinator diversity consistently reduces reproductive success for wild and cultivated plants Nature Ecology & Evolution - A meta-analysis finds that decreasing diversity of pollinator species has a negative affect on multiple measures of plant reproductive success, with wild plant...

[new paper] You probably suspected that loss of pollinator diversity consistently reduces reproductive success for wild and cultivated plants, but here we quantify it: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This is beyond fascinating!

Swabbing a mouse's head with a Q-tip with Staphylococcus epidermidis engineered to express a tetanus toxoid antigen can elicit a robust & protective immune response against lethal exposure!

Imagine: vaccination by gentle Q-tip on skin!

#IDSky #ImmunoSky #SciSky #MedSky

Posting this cartoon every once in a while for anyone struggling with imposter syndrome. I think it's a really helpful perspective. I don't know who originally made this, please add a link if you do. 🧪

Upcoming Protistology Meetings - International Society of Protistologists The International Society of Protistologists is an association of scientists devoted to research on single-celled eukaryotes, or protists. The ISOP promotes the presentation and discussion of new or i...

From the other place - I don’t think ISOP is on Bsky yet protistologists.org/upcoming-pro...

#ProtistsOnSky in 2025

Phylogenomic workflow for uncultivable microbial eukaryotes using single-cell RNA sequencing − A case study with planktonic ciliates (Ciliophora, Oligotrichea) Phylogenetic analyses increasingly rely on genomic and transcriptomic data to produce better supported inferences on the evolutionary relationships am…

Our new paper:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#protistsonsky

Here there is a download link if the previous one doesn't work: authors.elsevier.com/a/1kC9d3m3nN...

the back of the head of a calico cat facing a laptop. the laptop screen shows an image of a figure from this paper.

I tried too but I don't think she was listening :(

Something else worth pointing out is that you might be applying to be *the* evolutionary biologist at the school, not *an* evo bio. Members of the search committee might not have thought about your discipline since a grad school core course. Show off why you’ll be great in the classroom!

Soil microbiomes show consistent and predictable responses to extreme events - Nature Soils from 30 grasslands across Europe were subjected to 4 contrasting extreme climatic events under drought, flood, freezing and heat conditions, with the results suggesting that soil microbiomes fro...

Science takes time - a lot of time. Time that is more and more difficult to make available because of increased workloads. Time that exceeds the temporary contracts of postdocs and PhDs.

I'll illustrate this using our paper published in Nature yesterday. 🧵 (1/x)
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What did the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (#LECA) look like? Consensus View in #PLOSBiology; massive authorship including @AncestralState, @lauraeme.bsky.social, John Archbald, @andrewjroger.bsky.social, @dackslabecb.bsky.social, Jeremy Wideman. plos.io/4g0alq4

Exaptation of ancestral cell-identity networks enables C4 photosynthesis - Nature Single-nucleus RNA-sequencing and chromatin-accessibility analyses in rice (a C3 plant) and sorghum (a C4 plant) provide insight into how C4 photosynthesis evolved in bundle-sheath cells, revealing th...

Exaptation of ancestral cell-identity networks enables C4 photosynthesis www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New from the Ecker lab in collaboration with the Hibberd lab. Congrats all!

diatoms on the rocks = surfing on arctic ice 🧊 wow
#ProtistsOnSky

A map of flight paths emanating from breeding colony of gulls, with this caption: Early on, LifeWatch noticed something odd. Most gulls were making daily trips to Mouscron, a city on the French border 65 km away. They went to investigate and found the birds bingeing on discarded snacks at the Roger & Roger potato factory.

Today in relatable science: Gulls making a mysterious daily trip that turned out to be to a potato chip factory

Microbial eukaryotes and calls for improved data curation (my two favourite things)

A unique symbiosome in an anaerobic single-celled eukaryote Nature Communications - Symbiont-housing structures are well-studied in multicellular eukaryotes but rarely in unicellular protists. This study shows that low-oxygen-adapted Anaeramoebae have...

Want to be amazed by how a symbiont can be located at the center of a cell while still being an epibiont! Please read and be amazed by the symbiosis between Anaerameoba and sulfate-reducing bacteria!

Now out in Nature Communications (open access)! rdcu.be/dZGNe
(1/11)

Just realised I never did an introductory post - I'm Beth Altrogge (Richardson), microbiologist & bioinformatician. My research involves the adaptation of microbes to (circum)polar environments and / or hydrocarbon exposure, and I'm particularly interested in the intersection of the two.

Just had to explain to a student in class that before YouTube we had to watch our older siblings play through video games and if anyone needs me I'll be in the old folks home

Our big question for the community: Might you like to help maintain Mesquite after we stop? David and I are near retirement age. While we expect to continue active research, our patience for programming declines. It's open source, but grokking the architecture isn't easy alone.

Brassica xkcd.com/2827