Sarah Guest

Our work on Naegleria Myosin 2 is out! Naegleria encodes 3 Myo2s, which contract its actin network—the first evidence of contractile Myo2 outside of Amorphea. Myo2 is actually widespread in Naegleria's relatives and correlates with fast cell crawling. cell.com/current-biolog…

Plant developmental genes share functions & expression, but align orthologs' promoters and often… no conservation. Or is there? In our new preprint, we show that conservation exists and is ancient, but was just obscured by genome complexity. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

.@fluoroforce, @pwoakes @myosincity et al. demonstrate subcellular biophysical mechanisms that enable #myosin 2 filament assembly. hubs.la/Q02_5lWN0 Part of the Year in Cell Biology: hubs.la/Q02_5CFd0 #CellBio2024

If you like Wallace's tweetorial and are going to ASCB, look out for my talk Tues. Dec 17th on how the microtubule cytoskeleton dictates RNA regionalization in Stentor! #cellbio2024 #stentor #protist #NIHMOSAIC

Happy Halloween! For night 31 of #31NightsOfHalloween #Microscreepy, here is a grand finale video!

For night 28 of #31NightsOfHalloween #MicrosCreepy, IT'S ALIVE! These are reanimated cell "ghosts," which are cells that have had their membranes/cytoplasm washed away, leaving the cytoskeleton behind. Adding ATP activates myosin motors, which causes contraction!

For night 23 of #31nightsofhalloween #MicrosCreepy, here’s a blebby amoeba! I overlaid several frames of a movie into the same image, so you can see the motion of the cell (inverted phase contrast) and its mitochondria (purple/pink/yellow).

Excited to announce that our 2025 Advanced Research Training Course schedule is up and applications are open! 🎉🎉🎉 See you in Woods Hole! mbl.edu/courses

ICYMI: our effort to convince you that ExM has the potential to completely transform microbial ecology and protistology. We’ve only focussed on the cytoskeleton thus far - come join us and we can explore your favourite organelle/species/clade together! #PlanExM #ExpandEverything

For night 19 of #31NightsOfHalloween #MicrosCreepy, here are some amoebae huddling together. The blinking you’re seeing is the contractile vacuole filling and emptying—this is how many pond-dwelling protists deal with fresh water rushing through the membrane due to osmosis.

We were fortunate to have @Sarahmoeba leading Microscopy Monday yesterday! She gave a talk on original microscopy techniques used for evolutionary significant but understudied protists. 🦠🔬💚 #Microscopy_Monday_Howard_University

First molecular data on Pocheina (Acrasidae, Heterolobosea). This paper represents a very long journey, starting with a mistake I made as a PhD student. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

For night 6 of #31NightsofHalloween #MicrosCreepy, here’s a monster of an amoeba with 6 nuclei!

For night 3 of #31NightsofHalloween #MicrosCreepy, here are some cells spilling their guts

For night 4 of #31NightsofHalloween #MicrosCreepy, here is a scary alien! Or, an amoeba imaged by Scanning Electron Microscreepy.

Not pictured, the timestamps showing how long I waited between each message.

For night 2 of #31NightsofHalloween #MicrosCreepy, here is a video of amoebae crawling on a glass coverslip. These cells were imaged by IRM, which shows only the area of the cell in closest contact with the coverslip (like footprints!)

It’s that time of year again— #31NightsofHalloween #MicrosCreepy! For night 1, here are some amoebae stained for actin polymer 🧡

@spearmicrobe @ABC They really aren't cutting his mic as promised 😔

Debate. 🍊—“They are eating the cats!” @ABC—is not following the debate rules. Biased coverage happening in real time. Check it.

Happy Friday! I hope you get a chance to go on a little adventure this weekend, like these exploring amoebae carving trails in their bacteria lawn.