Asgard archaea have actin - but what about microtubules? Where do they come from? 🧐 Our new paper www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... by @xujwet.bsky.social & @florianwollweber.bsky.social, in collaboration with the Schleper & Wieczorek labs, describes tiny Asgard microtubules! #TeamTomo #ArchaeaSky 1/6 - ThreadSky

pilhoferlab.bsky.social • 12 days ago

Asgard archaea have actin - but what about microtubules? Where do they come from? 🧐 Our new paper https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00254-5 by @xujwet.bsky.social & @florianwollweber.bsky.social, in collaboration with the Schleper & Wieczorek labs, describes tiny Asgard microtubules! #TeamTomo #ArchaeaSky 1/6

Comments

dchretien.bsky.social•11 days ago

Beautiful work, a nice add to the microtubule bestiary!

cellarchlab.com•12 days ago

Beautiful story (Inspirational, really!!) and beautiful cover art🎨🥰

pilhoferlab.bsky.social•12 days ago

It all started when we spotted small tube-like structures in cryo-tomograms of Ca. Lokiarchaeum ossiferum – aka the skeleton-carrying Lokiarchaeon 🦴! Using proteomics & transcriptomics, we identified new Asgard tubulins (Atubs)—which show a surprising link to both eukaryotes and PVC bacteria!🦠 2/6

pilhoferlab.bsky.social•12 days ago

They are related to the bacterial tubulins that Martin studied in his PhD&PostDoc (https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.100121), which form mini-microtubules in Prosthecobacter. Using #CryoEM, we found that Asgard tubulins form eukaryote-like heterodimers & polymerize into real (but tiny) microtubules! 🤯 3/6

pilhoferlab.bsky.social•12 days ago

But… we couldn’t easily find more tubes in tomograms 🤔 We turned to expansion microscopy (ExM)! Thanks to an amazing intro from @centriolelab.bsky.social & @marinelap.bsky.social, we learned how to do ExM 🔬💥. After many gels, we finally observed Atub filaments in a small subpopulation of cells. 4/6

pilhoferlab.bsky.social•12 days ago

What is next? We still don't know what these tiny microtubules do... Are there more Asgard/PVC tubulins waiting to be discovered? 🧬 5/6

pilhoferlab.bsky.social•12 days ago

We have to thank many people: The Schleper lab @univie.ac.at for sharing L. ossiferum & bioinformatics, Michal Wieczorek with @fmarxer.bsky.social @eth-dbiol.bsky.social (who imaged these tiny tubes growing in IRM!) and @margotriggi.bsky.social for updating her beautiful Loki illustration 6/6