A 🆕 #Ichthyosporea story
Led [email protected], in Co. @gautamdey.bsky.social & @hiralshah.bsky.social+🔥team across @embl.org & @sciencesunige.bsky.social
We finally have a look at what #microtubules are doing during #cellularization in #Sphaeroforma
▶️ tinyurl.com/MTSARC
#ProtistsOnSky

The first species that Dudin’s lab imaged using expansion microscopy was the unicellular eukaryote Sphaeroforma arctica, a protist that has multiple nuclei in a single cell. This image shows cells at different stages of their life cycle.

8/ To test our predictions, we used expansion microscopy to examine distributions of nuclear pore complexes in Sphaeroforma arctica.

Finally, in unicellulars, chromatin architecture is “passively” defined by active/repressive chromatin states, without evidence of sequence elements or specific factor binding. See for example co-segregating repressive domains in Sphaeroforma, highly enriched in TEs:

Molecular phylogeny, morphology, and ultrastructure of a Mesomycetozoea member, Sphaeroforma nootkatensis isolated from Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas, on the Southern coast of Korea https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39742564/

I just want to #welcome all the new members with a beautiful multinucleated #Ichthyosporean just before undergoing #cellularization to form a transient #multicellular stage.
Imaged using #Expansion #Microscopy ( #UExM )

Species: Sphaeroforma arctica
Blue: Nuclei
Magenta: Tubulin