Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺
Professor of Microbiology @ WUR 🇳🇱 | Evolutionary microbiology | Exploring the Tree of Life | Archaea aficionado | Symbiotic interactions | husband, father, cat-person, eternal house renovator, secretly a Jedi knight
- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺www.wur.nl/en/vacancy/f... Become our new colleague (and next door neighbor) and lead a chair/group/department of Biophysics at Wageningen University. Reach out to me for info and please spread!!!
- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺Check out our new review in Nature Reviews Genetics on de novo emerged genes and proteins. How they emerge, are lost and persist - and how de novo emerged proteins relate to randomized proteins! @bornberglab.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- New review out in Nat Rev Genet: Emergence & evolution of protein-coding de novo genes by Erich and Lars Eicholt @lacholt.bsky.social. How non-coding DNA becomes translated, persists or is lost in populations, and can yield structured/functional proteins—plus methods & open questions! rdcu.be/e09SM
- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺Join us at the Evolutionary Biology Centre at Uppsala University. We’re searching for an Assistant Professor in Biology. www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...
- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺The Laboratory of Biophysics at Wageningen University & Research (NL) is looking for a new chair! Details here: www.wur.nl/en/vacancy/f...
- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺EMBL is deeply saddened by the passing of our Interim Director General Peer Bork, a pioneering scientist who left an indelible imprint on life science research in Europe and beyond. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues. www.embl.org/news/people-...
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- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺Our latest. Led by the very talented @ahoiching.bsky.social Cell cycle dysregulation of globally important SAR11 bacteria resulting from environmental perturbation www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs 🌊
- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺We mourn the passing of Peer Bork, EMBO Member since 2000: embl.org/news/embl-announcem…
- I have a postdoc position in metagenomic exploration available in my group. Candidates with documented experience in phylo & metagenomics and preferably with petabase-scale data mining and GLM workflows are encouraged to apply. Come join us! 🧬🦠💻 Please repost Apply here: www.wur.nl/en/vacancy/p...
- Come join us! Soon I will be advertising a postdoc vacancy in my group as part of my @erc.europa.eu AdG project 'DARK ROOTS'. Focus of the project will be on phylo- and metagenomic mining of novel prokaryotic lineages. I will soon post a link here - stay tuned, and please repost! #asgardarchaea

- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺Just on time for the holidays! Happy to share the published version of the discovery of leptophytes, a new deep-branching and widespread group of microalgae based on plastid MAGs (ptMAGs). Now with additional support from a mitochondrial MAG (mtMAG) of leptophytes. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺So happy to announce our new preprint, “A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes.” We cultured a novel amoeba from Lassen Volcanic NP (CA, USA) that divides at 63°C (145°F) 🔥 - a new record for euk growth! #protistsonsky 🧵
- Come join us! Soon I will be advertising a postdoc vacancy in my group as part of my @erc.europa.eu AdG project 'DARK ROOTS'. Focus of the project will be on phylo- and metagenomic mining of novel prokaryotic lineages. I will soon post a link here - stay tuned, and please repost! #asgardarchaea

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- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:
- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺We are looking for a PhD student to work on an exciting plastid endosymbiosis in microbial eukaryotes. This position involves sampling, exciting microscopy such as CARDFISH, ExM and FIBSEM, single-cell transcriptomics and more. #protistsonsky 1/2
- Yesterday it was 20 years since I defended my PhD thesis! I have struggled my way through the academic system, with times when I was about to give up due to lack of funding and support. I am proud where I am now, and what I have achieved. Thanks to everyone who supported me and believed in me!
- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺Do you want to do a Masters in Evolutionary Biology? The call for applying to the MEME program is now open! MEME is a fantastic 2-year MSc between four European Universities on all areas of Evolutionary Biology. Apply and study in Sweden/France/the Netherlands/Germany/USA/Switzerland! www.evobio.eu
- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺Interesting how companies and the financial world is racing to spend mindboggling amounts of money to build the infrastructure to train computers. But we are leaving the infrastructure to train and educate humans crumbling. The question is who will train who?

- OK, somebody should say it: the term 'one-stop-shop' has no place in academic research. Due to their diverse and exploratory nature, there is no single solution for scientific projects - else this would be routine research. RT if you agree, or feel free to argue otherwise below.

- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺Happy to share that our story on the bacterial archaellum was published today in @natmicrobiol.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41... Congrats to the authors: @sshamphavi.bsky.social @loumollat.bsky.social @mariejoest.bsky.social Najwa Taib and @sgribaldo.bsky.social
- Would you expect that Bacteria use an archaellum for swimming? We didn't, but we found that some Chloroflexota do! Find the story here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A little thread below 1/n
- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺🧵 Our study on the elusive titration control mechanism of the replication initiator DnaA in Escherichia coli is now out on @natcomms.nature.com! @stephkoe.bsky.social @hohlbeinlab.bsky.social @nicoc-micsynmet.bsky.social @ettema.bsky.social @mib-wur.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s414...
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- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺📣 ELIXIR has published a position paper on the importance of #OpenData infrastructure for 🌍 European competitiveness in life sciences. Read the news 👉 loom.ly/22XW72k #ResearchInfrastructure #Science4EU
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- Our latest work, driven by the fabulous @stephkoe.bsky.social! WitChi takes care of compositional bias in large phylogenomic datasets! WitChi is fast, efficient and free, try it out! With @kassipan.bsky.social and @danieltamarit.bsky.social
- 1. 🧵 New preprint out! WitChi: a fast, open-source Python tool to detect, quantify & prune compositional bias in MSAs. Lightweight, tree-free, scalable to 5k+ taxa... so we applied it to the GTDB archaea MSA. #ArchaeaSky #MEvoSky #MicroSky 🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025... 💻 github.com/stephkoest/w...
- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺Out in @natbiotech.nature.com: Metagenome taxonomy profilers usually ignore unknown species. SingleM is an accurate profiler which doesn't, even detecting phyla with no MAGs. Profiles of 700,000 metagenomes at sandpiper.qut.edu.au. A 🧵
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- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺New vacancy in my team! PhD student position on microbial genome evolution, focusing on the evolutionary principles underlying bacterial genome architecture. Please repost and share with talented MSc students in #evobio, bioinformatics or related :) www.uu.nl/en/organisat... #MEvoSky #MicroSky
- On this day, 10 years ago, my lab published the @nature.com paper reporting the discovery of the Asgard archaea (Lokiarchaeota at the time), revealing the archaeal nature of eukaryotic cells, and reshaping the Tree of Life. What a ride it has been since then... www.nature.com/articles/nat...
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- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺Delighted to share our new preprint on the cell biology and genome of Stentor pyriformis, a giant ciliate that maintains Chlorella endosymbionts in surface-associated microtubule baskets. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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- ... als de zondagsscholen maar niet gekort worden...
- In 2015 we discovered 'Loki', the first member of the Asgard archaea, the closest relatives of eukaryotes. Did you know that in stead of Lokiarchaea, we considered the name Eoarchaea. 'Eo' after Eos, the greek goddess of dawn, and in reference to the eocyte hypothesis for the origin of eukaryotes.
- Not new here but will become more active at @bsky.app (I am no longer active on X) Follow me to hear more about the wonderful world of microbes (evolution, archaea, symbiosis, new microbes, ...). Expect occasional rants about academia, 🇳🇱 politics, life, etc. My research group: go.bsky.app/MzZPftE
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- Reposted by Thijs J. G. Ettema 🦠🔬🇳🇱🇸🇪🇪🇺I took biochem in 2001, and for nearly 20 years read amino acid sequences daily… and I never knew Dayhoff named them or even the logic behind things like Q until last Friday (h/t Mike Janech). Also, this is another big Dayhoff moment for me. She was incredible! #proteomics #bioinformatics
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- Controversy about being 'a scientist' - 100 years ago in @natureportfolio.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...
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- Ten days remaining to apply to this exciting PhD position - join us in our quest to explore novel archaeal lineages!
- Want to do a #PhD focusing on discovery, cultivation and characterization of novel prokaryotes? Come and join my group in the Laboratory of Microbiology at Wageningen University! Apply here: wur.nl/en/vacancy/p... #cultivation #microscopy #archaea #PhDposition Please share & repost
- Want to do a #PhD focusing on discovery, cultivation and characterization of novel prokaryotes? Come and join my group in the Laboratory of Microbiology at Wageningen University! Apply here: wur.nl/en/vacancy/p... #cultivation #microscopy #archaea #PhDposition Please share & repost
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