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lfelipeb.bsky.social
Postdoc at @Beyond_ASU | Gardener and Evolutionary Biologist | Astrobiology | Virus evolution | Children's book author | Experimental musician | Brasileiro. https://lfbenites.com/
6 posts 41 followers 88 following
Prolific Poster

Science covered our recent meeting, as we try and get microbial conservation integrated into the IUCN. ‘A publicity problem’: New group pushes for microbes to be conserved like other endangered species | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Really proud to have had a small contribution to this work. Shane Farrell and Doug Rasher led the way showing that climate change can cause feedback effects that may make it difficult to restore ecosystems. In this case kelp is inhibited by red algae that replaces it www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

😻 HUGE NEWS! One of the "Magnificent 8" – key missing lineages for understanding animal origins – is ALIVE in our lab! Watch the video! Massive thanks to @luisjagago.bsky.social (isolation wizard!) & @beaplab.bsky.social @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social @prbb.org @csic.es @erc.europa.eu #protistsonSky

@nataliadrebesdorr.bsky.social @mblokesch.bsky.social analysed the genomes of 46 Vibrio cholerae strains, showing how nonpandemic strains may function as reservoirs of adaptive genetic diversity with impact on the emergence of pandemic strains. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf079 #genome #cholera

Delighted to see our work now published in @currentbiology.bsky.social. A great place for Bostrychia to stake its claim as an emerging red algal model system. Check it out here: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Polykrikos fires tiny harpoons to capture its prey. I've had so much fun creating all the interactions between cells for this game! Aggi's Tiny Friends releases on Steam on the 26th! #microbiology #protists #protistsonsky #MadeWithUnity #gamedev 🦠🧫🔬🎮 store.steampowered.com/app/3190840/...

My friends in the Life of Retaria group decided to make a podcast! In the first episode, they interview @fabnot.bsky.social about his journey as a scientist. I loved the first episode, hope you do too! @juliemeilland.bsky.social @sandinmm.bsky.social et al. thelifeofretaria.github.io/podcast.html

The Emergence of Chirality From Metabolism astrobiology.com/2025/05/the-... #astrobiology #biochemistry #genomics

Very excited this part of my PhD is out 🎉 We describe vent viral and microbial traits that govern viral biogeography and contribute to mounting evidence that these communities are highly endemic, and thus likely vulnerable to disruptive activities like deep sea mining #Microbiome #DeepSeaMining

It isn’t existential loneliness that drives microbes to form biofilms; it’s the benefits of communal living. The shape of a biofilm impacts how it gets its nutrients, and this nutrient availability alters metabolism and cell survival. www.quantamagazine.org/how-a-biofil...

Very excited to finally see this out! 🦠🧬 Huge thanks to all of my amazing co-authors! @lpachter.bsky.social @delaneyksull.bsky.social Original paper thread: x.com/neuroluebber... Free access link to the paper: rdcu.be/eiIWC

First study from the lab is out! We describe ApuRs, a new family of microbial rhodopsins unique from apusomonads. ApuRs represent the first anion-conducting rhodopsin channels that can be controlled by UV light, offering potential as new optogenetic tools. #protistsonsky doi.org/10.1101/2025... 👇

Happy to have played a small part in this. Prometheid is a proposed supergroup that contains previously deep orphan lineages. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #protistsonsky

Excited to share our new mSphere paper describing ssRNA viruses associated with Karenia brevis harmful algal blooms in southwest Florida in mSphere led by Jean Lim - a 🧵(1/10) 🧪🦠🌊 #MicroSky #ProtistsOnSky #USFCMS @asm.org @cmarinescience.bsky.social journals.asm.org/doi/full/10....

Many of you may be celebrating Easter—if so, happy Easter! 🐣🐰 For today’s #MidweekMicrobe, we’ll go egg hunting with a model organism in biomedicine—a well-known star behind two Nobel-winning discoveries—the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila! 📷 @fmikus.bsky.social

Are we true individuals? What kind of individuality can be defined when we take into account our microbial symbionts? Check this great paper by Scott Gilbert, Jan Sapp & Alfred Tauber on the holobionts & how this has changed our perspective of individuality. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1...

Our work on cryptic infection of giant viruses was published today in @ScienceMagazine . We discovered a large virus hiding within a green algal genome producing virions. Collaborative effort spearheaded by Virginia Tech, University of Miami & NIOZ scientists. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I just found what I thought were deleted photos from our 2023 field season of #forams grown in "The Bad Water" (pCO2 = 800ppm). The forams weren't happy, but the symbionts were! Here, we captured the moment the organic template formed in the final chamber of Orbulina universa for #transcriptomics

Check our paper by @nicolecoots.bsky.social, where she delved into the photosynthetic symbionts on Polycystine #Rhizaria. Nicole came to @biosstation.bsky.social after having to drastically change her dissertation due to COVID, So proud of you, Nicole, keep going! academic.oup.com/plankt/artic...

Excited to share JK Da'Anoy's first dissertation chapter published in @sicbjournals.bsky.social! What started off as a side project morphed into great work! "Microbial depletion is associated with slower cnidarian regeneration" LOTS of wondergrads made this happen! Go team :) doi.org/10.1093/icb/...

Bonus testate amoeba timelapse from a student enrichment culture. Such beautiful fun in the microbial world. #protistsonsky

"For now unfortunately, it is sometimes easier to find a new centrohelid species than to find a known one again." Wow! Worth checking for any #protistsonsky follower. Gorgeous images, amazing explanations. Congrats @zlatogursky.bsky.social and @amoebadiscovery.bsky.social

“Successfully detecting extraterrestrial life might mean we need to reframe how we currently conceptualize evidence for what even counts as ‘life’ on Earth.” — @future-humans.bsky.social to @saraimari.bsky.social #aliens #alienlife #astrobiology #futurehumans

We are glad to announce that #MidweekMicrobe is back!🥳 Today we are celebrating the International Children's Book Day coinciding with Hans Christian Andersen's birthday. A creative mind, Hans published the tale The Drop of Water in 1847, available at andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersho....

Currently playing this masterpiece that was released 10 years ago, #Bloodborne! The hardest, scariest, and most rewarding game I've ever played. Nothing scratches that eldritch cosmic horror itch quite like it. Hope to see a sequel one day! #PS4 #FromSoftware

Have you been keeping up with the NMDC blog? We just released a new post about how three of our 2024 Ambassadors were able to use NMDC EDGE to educate microbiome researchers around the world! Read the full story: buff.ly/lqOXQoi 🧪

need to see a super busy 𝘝𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢 on friday, preparing for the weekend? OK, here you are... (borrowed from えみぃ @tubottle on 𝕏, x.com/tubottle/sta...) #ProtistsOnSky

How to know that there's life on a planet? What biosignatures can be detected? In a 1993 @nature.com paper, Carl Sagan and his team turned Galileo's spacecraft towards our planet. Here's what they found and the lessons for future exoplanet research nature.com/articles/365...

New @pnas.org paper alert, led by QBioS PhD Daniel Muratore & now Omidyar Fellow @sfiscience.bsky.social, Naomi Gilbert, Gary LeCleir & @tn-marine-micro.bsky.social: we find evidence for diel partitioning in microbial phosphorus uptake in the Sargasso. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New paper using strains RCC1383 and 3387: "Metabolic interdependence and rewiring in Radiolaria-microalgae Photosymbioses" academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

🚨 New paper alert! 🚨 A robustly rooted tree of eukaryotes sheds light on their deep evolutionary ancestry—suggesting that the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA) may have had an excavate-like cell architecture. 🧵🔬 (1/) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Next #SETILive: Amino Acids on Bennu! TODAY, Mar 13, 2:30 PM PDT Beth Johnson and Danny Glavin will discuss how the OSIRIS-REx mission's sample of asteroid Bennu shows that 14 of the 20 amino acids life on Earth uses to form proteins have been found. WATCH LIVE: youtube.com/live/nhstLeQ... 🧪 👩‍🔬

New preprint out! 🐝🦠 Among the incredible diversity of bees, only a few have evolved a highly social lifestyle—honey bees and stingless bees (Apidae). We characterize for first time, using metagenomics/microbial experiments, the microbiome of a stingless bee colony

First paper from a new collaboration with Ricardo and researchers from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, INPA, and UFAM in Manaus, Brazil rdcu.be/ectKU

Yesterday, we went to watch I'm Still Here ("Ainda Estou Aqui" pt-br) at the theater, and even though I already knew the real story, it hit pretty hard, what a great movie! But one of the best surprises is the soundtrack! Just listen to this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYYr...