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Francesca Pinton

@frapinton.bsky.social

PhD student - Hejnol's Lab - FSU Jena

Francesca Pinton @frapinton.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Algal symbionts go through a lot for their acoel host: ingested, stripped of cell wall and flagella, displaced to all tissues, both intra- and extracellular. Animal grows, gets nutrients and some stress responses. With @hejnol.bsky.social @rimskaya.bsky.social Preprint at doi.org/10.64898/202...

doi.org

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Francesca Pinton @frapinton.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

First paper of my PhD published 🎉 doi.org/10.1186/s129... It's about immunity in acoel worms and its link to photosymbiosis. There's evolution and immune gene expression, but also mortality, dysbiosis, and host responses upon pathogen exposure. With @hejnol.bsky.social and @rimskaya.bsky.social!

doi.org

Absence of conserved immune signalling pathways and increased pathogen susceptibility associated to photosymbiosis in acoels - BMC Biology

Background Host immunity plays an important role in coral symbiosis with dinoflagellates. Photosymbiosis (the association between hosts and photosynthetic endosymbionts) has evolved multiple times wit...

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