Pilhofer Lab 🦠❄️🔬
@pilhoferlab.bsky.social
Microbial cell-cell interactions | contractile injection systems | cytoskeleton | evolution | multiscale imaging | ETH Zürich
- run by lab members -
- run by lab members -
Florian also adapted expansion microscopy to archaeal cells, which will most certainly leverage future exciting insights into Asgards. Florian - we're looking forward to reading🤓 your future papers 📜
Soo glad that we all could be a part of your journey 🙏
-Martin
Soo glad that we all could be a part of your journey 🙏
-Martin
November 1, 2025 at 12:41 PM
Florian also adapted expansion microscopy to archaeal cells, which will most certainly leverage future exciting insights into Asgards. Florian - we're looking forward to reading🤓 your future papers 📜
Soo glad that we all could be a part of your journey 🙏
-Martin
Soo glad that we all could be a part of your journey 🙏
-Martin
Florian found that their peculiar cellular architecture🦠 was scaffolded by an actin cytoskeleton🦴. In a follow-up, Florian et al. also discovered microtubules comprising eukaryote-like tubulins, which brought this line of research back to my own roots!-- microtubules in bacteria
November 1, 2025 at 12:41 PM
Florian found that their peculiar cellular architecture🦠 was scaffolded by an actin cytoskeleton🦴. In a follow-up, Florian et al. also discovered microtubules comprising eukaryote-like tubulins, which brought this line of research back to my own roots!-- microtubules in bacteria
Here is one of the first images Florian recorded in 2021 after many hours of hunting Asgards in the microscope. My advice at the time: "Keep going- just don't tell your structural biology colleagues that you're burning days of Krios time in pursuit of weird cells in a poorly characterized sample ;)"
November 1, 2025 at 12:41 PM
Here is one of the first images Florian recorded in 2021 after many hours of hunting Asgards in the microscope. My advice at the time: "Keep going- just don't tell your structural biology colleagues that you're burning days of Krios time in pursuit of weird cells in a poorly characterized sample ;)"
🥳 Today marks the start of the lab of former postdoc @florianwollweber.bsky.social at @embl.org Grenoble!
www.embl.org/groups/wollw...
Florian-- we will miss you dearly and wish you much success!
With us, Florian applied multiscale imaging 🔬to Asgard archaea ...👇
www.embl.org/groups/wollw...
Florian-- we will miss you dearly and wish you much success!
With us, Florian applied multiscale imaging 🔬to Asgard archaea ...👇
November 1, 2025 at 12:41 PM
🥳 Today marks the start of the lab of former postdoc @florianwollweber.bsky.social at @embl.org Grenoble!
www.embl.org/groups/wollw...
Florian-- we will miss you dearly and wish you much success!
With us, Florian applied multiscale imaging 🔬to Asgard archaea ...👇
www.embl.org/groups/wollw...
Florian-- we will miss you dearly and wish you much success!
With us, Florian applied multiscale imaging 🔬to Asgard archaea ...👇
🧐Checkout our preprint revealing the stepwise firing💥 mechanism of a Contractile Injection System @xujwet.bsky.social[email protected] trapped the complex by structure-guided engineering🧪 in multiple intermediate states and imaged them by multimodal #cryoEM❄️🔬
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
October 8, 2025 at 9:18 PM
🧐Checkout our preprint revealing the stepwise firing💥 mechanism of a Contractile Injection System @xujwet.bsky.social[email protected] trapped the complex by structure-guided engineering🧪 in multiple intermediate states and imaged them by multimodal #cryoEM❄️🔬
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Check out 🧐 our new preprint 📜:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Congrats🎉 to @vasilgaisin.bsky.social and Corina Hadjicharalambous, who studied contractile injection systems directly in hot spring♨️ bacterial mats🦠
#microsky #teamtomo #Chloroflexota
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Congrats🎉 to @vasilgaisin.bsky.social and Corina Hadjicharalambous, who studied contractile injection systems directly in hot spring♨️ bacterial mats🦠
#microsky #teamtomo #Chloroflexota
August 12, 2025 at 7:22 AM
Check out 🧐 our new preprint 📜:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Congrats🎉 to @vasilgaisin.bsky.social and Corina Hadjicharalambous, who studied contractile injection systems directly in hot spring♨️ bacterial mats🦠
#microsky #teamtomo #Chloroflexota
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Congrats🎉 to @vasilgaisin.bsky.social and Corina Hadjicharalambous, who studied contractile injection systems directly in hot spring♨️ bacterial mats🦠
#microsky #teamtomo #Chloroflexota
Jingwei established single particle cryoEM in the lab, he developed the FilamentID method, and he made exciting discoveries including Asgard microtubules and the Algoriphagus contractile injection system. We will miss you dearly Jingwei 🙏 and are excited to read great papers 📜 from your lab!
August 1, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Jingwei established single particle cryoEM in the lab, he developed the FilamentID method, and he made exciting discoveries including Asgard microtubules and the Algoriphagus contractile injection system. We will miss you dearly Jingwei 🙏 and are excited to read great papers 📜 from your lab!
Jingwei joined after his PhD at Tsinghua and he started his lab today at Westlake University:
en.westlake.edu.cn/faculty/jing...
en.westlake.edu.cn/faculty/jing...
August 1, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Jingwei joined after his PhD at Tsinghua and he started his lab today at Westlake University:
en.westlake.edu.cn/faculty/jing...
en.westlake.edu.cn/faculty/jing...
Gregor discovered septal junctions and contractile injection systems in cyanobacteria, he investigated the mechanism of uromodulin, and he revealed the mechanism of predation via ixotrophy - what a ride...We will miss Gregor and his team and wish them exciting discoveries and much success🧪
August 1, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Gregor discovered septal junctions and contractile injection systems in cyanobacteria, he investigated the mechanism of uromodulin, and he revealed the mechanism of predation via ixotrophy - what a ride...We will miss Gregor and his team and wish them exciting discoveries and much success🧪
Gregor started to work with me as a Caltech summer student in 2012, followed by a Diploma thesis, a PhD, and a position as a project leader. He started his lab today at the University of Zürich:
www.weiss-laboratory.com
www.weiss-laboratory.com
August 1, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Gregor started to work with me as a Caltech summer student in 2012, followed by a Diploma thesis, a PhD, and a position as a project leader. He started his lab today at the University of Zürich:
www.weiss-laboratory.com
www.weiss-laboratory.com
We welcomed the next generation of scientists in the lab for microscopy 🔬, DNA 🧬 isolation, PCR, gel electrophoresis and the obligatory 🍕 lunch! This year we welcomed 12th graders from the HCA Gymnasium 🏫. Thanks to all lab members for introducing the students to science and biology 🧪🧫
July 11, 2025 at 7:39 AM
We welcomed the next generation of scientists in the lab for microscopy 🔬, DNA 🧬 isolation, PCR, gel electrophoresis and the obligatory 🍕 lunch! This year we welcomed 12th graders from the HCA Gymnasium 🏫. Thanks to all lab members for introducing the students to science and biology 🧪🧫
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
March 21, 2025 at 3:16 PM
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
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
March 21, 2025 at 3:16 PM
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
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
March 21, 2025 at 3:16 PM
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
They are related to the bacterial tubulins that Martin studied in his PhD&PostDoc (journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...), 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
March 21, 2025 at 3:16 PM
They are related to the bacterial tubulins that Martin studied in his PhD&PostDoc (journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...), 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
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
March 21, 2025 at 3:16 PM
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
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
March 21, 2025 at 3:16 PM
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
And another bad news: there’s also a lot of them other killers 😣⚔️ We find that the machinery is conserved, also very much deadly to other haloarchaea 😰 and attached to their membrane - like a Type 6 secretion system! 🧵4/5
November 16, 2024 at 3:03 PM
And another bad news: there’s also a lot of them other killers 😣⚔️ We find that the machinery is conserved, also very much deadly to other haloarchaea 😰 and attached to their membrane - like a Type 6 secretion system! 🧵4/5
We tried to be subtle about it, but yes, they use those to kill ☠️🪦 (or at least stop other species from multiplying 🤒) Those other salty microbes better watch their back and don’t go too near them, if they don’t want to pop to death❗️❗️❗️🧵3/5
November 16, 2024 at 3:01 PM
We tried to be subtle about it, but yes, they use those to kill ☠️🪦 (or at least stop other species from multiplying 🤒) Those other salty microbes better watch their back and don’t go too near them, if they don’t want to pop to death❗️❗️❗️🧵3/5
Bioinformatics 👩💻🧬 show that archaea can assemble contractile injection systems or what we like to call them “molecular daggers” 🗡️ (ouch 😖) But do they actually produce them? Well, Halogeometricum borinquense does! 😬😱 Check out that unit! 🧵2/5
November 16, 2024 at 2:58 PM
Bioinformatics 👩💻🧬 show that archaea can assemble contractile injection systems or what we like to call them “molecular daggers” 🗡️ (ouch 😖) But do they actually produce them? Well, Halogeometricum borinquense does! 😬😱 Check out that unit! 🧵2/5
It’s wildin’ out there in the microbial world 💀🦠 - with Aureispira grappling and stabbing 🔪🩸 and Yersinia sacrificing themselves 🫥🤕 Now, it’s time we expose the violent tendencies 🥷 of a salty 🧂 #archaea in our new paper in Science Advances! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵1/5 #cryoET #teamtomo
November 16, 2024 at 2:57 PM
It’s wildin’ out there in the microbial world 💀🦠 - with Aureispira grappling and stabbing 🔪🩸 and Yersinia sacrificing themselves 🫥🤕 Now, it’s time we expose the violent tendencies 🥷 of a salty 🧂 #archaea in our new paper in Science Advances! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵1/5 #cryoET #teamtomo