JoJo Sardina

@freshwaterhabitats.bsky.social

Bed of Chara hosting a frogspawn in an Oxford pond

Bonus bonus field elf doors

Bonus field pics

First collections of 2026!

Chara hispida (?, left) and Chara contraria (right) collected in Oxford, England.

This work gives us fascinating new insights into leaf-cutter ant biology, and a framework for further characterization of external cuticlar-secreted proteomes in other organisms!

Check it out here: 10.1021/acs.analchem.5c05220

The combination of these approaches allowed us to connect developmental protein dynamics with surface-localized proteins involved in metabolism, stress responce, and interactions with the environment.

Beyond the global proteome, we also focused on a thin protein layer secreted onto the exoskeleton. Isolating this miniscule protein layer was a technical challenge, and required development of a novel approach.

In this study, we used mass spectrometry–based proteomics to ask how protein abundance changes during early adult development of leaf-cutter ants 🍃🐜.

This is the 1st developmental proteome of this species, tracking 1000's of proteins across the early adult stage.

Happy to share this newly published work from my PhD, which I co-led in collaboration with the @lingjun2025.bsky.social lab, published in @pubs.acs.org.

And our cover art was accepted!

🧵1/5

“O Christmas stonewort, o Christmas stonewort”

Season’s greeting from the Characeae 🎄

Characeae-inspired architecture (maybe):

Spiraled columns of Norwich Cathedral….

Inspired by (perhaps) Chara axis cortication.

Bonus field photos

Chara vulgaris collected in Oxford, UK

whoa cool oogonia

Wow! beautiful voucher

Thanks @kenkarol.bsky.social for help with species identification

Fertile male of the dioecious Chara rusbyana

The orange spheres are the male reproductive structures (“antheridia”)

They are protected by intricately crafted “shield cells” (transparent outer layer), which unfold prior to mating

Fertile male of the dioecious Chara australis

Check out the intricate patterns on the antheridium (male gametangium)

#phycologyfriday

Chara globularis collected this weekend in Oxford

Is it me or do the oogonia look like SpongeBob’s home?🍍

Monoecious gametangia of Chara braunii
#PhycologyPhriday

📢 To all molecular mossers 📢

The Moss Workshop will be held in (not always as sunny as this) Oxford next year (30th June until 2nd July 2026). More details will follow soon, but in the meantime please make a note of the dates 😃 👍

Plant evolution: from origins to diversification on land The evolution of plants – photosynthetic eukaryotes resulting from the endosymbiosis of a cyanobacterium and a non-photosynthetic host cell – transformed the earth system by reducing the amount of CO…

Registration for the EMBO workshop ‘Plant evolution: from origins to diversification on land’ closes on 25th August. Don’t miss it! More details can be found here: meetings.embo.org/event/25-pla... 🌱 😀

cool work

Awesome work! Loved the paper

Chara is cool

#PhycologyPhriday

Fertile branchlet whorls of a british Chara species (hispida?).

Can you spot the tiny oogonia?

#phycologyphriday

Got to examine some beautiful Chara hispida vouchers, one collected by G.R. Bullock-Webster

Thanks to the Oxford Herbarium for the tour

Chara rusbyana (?) culture in Madison, WI