It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Bluesky has been a net negative for US politics. They corralled everyone on the left into a little glass fishbowl where they shout at one another & everyone else ignores them. Meanwhile, all the pols & institutions stayed on X & are being dragged farther right.

Why can't we explain enhancer action despite 2 decades of chromosome conformation technologies? 😬 Our new study spearheaded by Leonid Mirny's group points to a flaw in our assumptions, and to a solution from physical principles By @timothyfoldes.bsky.social 💻& @karissalhansen.bsky.social 🧪 🧵👇

Very excited to have Alex Meissner @molgen.mpg.de visit @upcite.bsky.social (jointly hosted by Pierre Defossez from the Epigenetics and Cell Fate Centre and me @ijmonod.bsky.social). If you want to see the cutting edge of DNA methylation in mammals, come to our big amphitheater on June 5!

A rather clever bit of satellite mapping of NO2 above cities combined with a measure of local GDP has revealed which cities have managed to grow economically while cutting their fossil-fuel-based emissions. Some are quite surprising. My latest for @nature.com 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

*** GRC Developmental Biology 2027 - Jan 17-22 @ Renaissance Tuscany Il Ciocco Resort *** Join us for a fabulous 2027 Gordon Conference on all things #devbio & the trainee-led GRS! More info on registration, abstract submission, et al., here: www.grc.org/developmenta... #GRCDevBio2027 🧬🐭🐟🪰🌱❤️

Excited to share a new preprint from the lab led by @lukekoblan.bsky.social and William Colgan in which we describe our efforts to define a quantitative cell fate map of mouse embryogenesis! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A very Happy Birthday to Sir David Attenborough today! My family Attenborough story: When schools closed in 2020, I raced to think of activities for my kids (then 6 and 8). One was that they should write a letter to someone they admire. My son chose Sir David. /1

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An historical figure of the transcription field has gone. Founder of @igbmc.bsky.social where I started my career. A great enabler as well.

Two new papers 📖 from our lab 1️⃣ What is epigenetics (and why X inactivation is?) rdcu.be/fhzSz and 2️⃣ A Baculovirus-based tool to express any gene of interest with high efficiency in Anopheles cells rdcu.be/fhzTy

Excited to share our @natgenet.nature.com study showing that epigenetically rewired transposable elements control AML leukemia stem cell properties and patient outcome. Grateful to the team & collaborators. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share our new study on CpG islands (CGIs) regulation by transcription factors (TFs)! CGIs drive most transcription initiation with unclear regulation. We find that chromatin-opening TFs are key players—following a surprisingly simple rule. 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/9

Excited to share our first story led by @martinacapriati.bsky.social! How do cells control the expression of viability genes? We find that single transcription factors can drive both chromatin opening and gene activation from densely co-bound CpG island promoters, including at essential genes

Please join the upcoming Jacques Monod Conference on the mechanistic and evolutionary basis of programmed DNA elimination in Roscoff, France. Deadline for abstract submission extended to May 20, 2026. cjm.sb-roscoff.fr/en/conferenc...

Notre discipline mise en avant dans Le Monde :) Interview de l'un des pionniers de l'évo-dévo, Denis Duboule, qui parle de l'histoire de l'évo-dévo, de ses découvertes mais aussi des questions qui restent à explorer ! www.lemonde.fr/sciences/art...

Very excited to share our newest findings! A very long team effort pursued by multiple team members -to frantically reproduce everything over and over-, we show mTOR-Polycomb synergy at promoters of developmental master regulator TFs in ESCs prior to their expression. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Loss is maintenance DNA methylation during cell proliferation/aging etc is not random. Intriguing new findings from the Rao lab show a strong correlation with dinucleotides flanking CpG sites. Seems likely to be important. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This a very important, and extremely well-executed study from Ralph Grand’s group @uniheidelberg.bsky.social. Congrats to all the authors! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New Preprint alert!🚨 Super excited to share my postdoc work now on BioRxiv. How does PRC2 loss lead to developmental failures? We combined rapid protein degradation with TLS embryoid models to uncover temporal and lineage-specific dependencies 🧬. Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/2026.04.18.719361

I wanted to share my new Spotlight in @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social that highlights a terrific paper linking gene body methylation with noise in gene expression: Silencing the noise with gene body methylation doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...

📖 The final version of our paper is out in press Cohesin cofactor dosage sets the rate of loop extrusion, rendering genome folding tunable yet vulnerable to genetic disruption authors.elsevier.com/a/1m%7EU03vV... or www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Checks out

👀 Brad Cairns is co-founder and chief scientist, so this seems quite legit

I know they're telling different types of stories, but it's pretty funny that the whole concept of Arrival is how difficult it would be to communicate with intelligent aliens. And in Project Hail Mary they figured it out in about 10 minutes of screen time

scRNA-seq has partly ruined murmurations for me...

Join us at the Mammalian Reproduction GRC conference next August in Maine! We have a fantastic line of speakers and free slots for talks selected from abstracts. Don't miss it! www.grc.org/mammalian-re...

This will be a really fun meeting in Dublin in June. I just got word that they are still accepting abstracts!

A biochemical curiosity: it is much more straightforward to go enzymatically from 5mC > T than it is to go from 5mC > C

Those amazing #phages 🦠 figured out 5mC chemistry before we did: 📄 Out today in @MolecularCell we describe a 5mC-selective #deaminase family in environmental phage genomes with broad applications for #5base #sequencing #epigenetics #DNAmethylation #genomics #NGS 🧬🧪 www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

These images show live embryos of animals (jellyfish, crustacean, worm, sea urchin, sea squirt, beetle) and one of animals closest single-celled relatives. They were captured taking advantage of fluorescent proteins localised on the outer membrane of cells, allowing us to observe cell outlines. 1/9

But don't rewrite the textbooks! Drt3b is highly tailored for poly(AC) and is NOT a general avenue for amino acid-to-DNA information transfer, though the conceptual implications are fun to consider. (4/6)

On va dans le mur 🧱⬅️🚗

Feels like this paper on protein-templated DNA synthesis by a natural enzyme warrants some comment. So here's a 🧵. /1 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

There are Science papers and then there are *I just dropped and shattered my mug of coffee Usual Suspects style* Science papers www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Very happy that @jacobsenucla.bsky.social won the ASPB-Carnegie Winslow Briggs Mentorship Award. Every day I think "what would Steve do"--the sign of a truly impactful mentor. Also 🙏 @jlawlab.bsky.social, who nominated Steve and put together the application. She will surely be a future winner!

🔬IGMM (CNRS/ Univ Montpellier) is hiring Group Leaders in Innovative Biology. @cnrsbiologie.bsky.social @cnrs.fr @umontpellier.bsky.social 📅 1 May–15 June 2026 📩 [email protected] 📎Full information 👇 #LifeScience #MolecularBiology #Research #PI #CNRS

Félix Simon's paper is out in its final form 😍 When we got into (extreme) detail in the temporal and spatial patterning of neuroblasts, Félix asked a simple question "sure, but how does this translate into neuronal cell fate?". www.nature.com/articles/s41...

ERC : "We're overwhelmed with funding request, it's becoming unmanageable. We need to find a way to reduce the number of applications." French Government: "You need to go get the money from Europe, you bunch of losers!" 🫣

With all the cuts to research funding in European countries, everyone is turning to the ERC... The ERC should be a source of supplementary funding, not a substitute. Every country in Europe must invest in basic research and increase its budgets!!!!

In Nature this week: Motherhood derails women’s academic careers — these data reveal how and why www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Happy to share our review of the past, recent, and future applications of synthetic genomics in studying the 3D functional organization of chromosomes, a set of approaches that are gaining momentum! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Help needed: I know this has been discussed before - what are people doing now that phase lock tubes have disappeared from the market? Is everyone making their own and that's why companies are not selling them anymore? If so, what is the best vaccum grease you would recommend? 🤷‍♀️

He knows that NIH spent their apportionment but he also knows they did by sending dollars to upcoming years with the result of ~25% fewer proposals- which is a massive cut. He just lies to the face of Congress

📣📣 Deadline approaching 📣📣 (Please re-post) If you are thinking of starting (or moving) your lab, do not miss the opportunity to apply to join us at the @i2bcparissaclay.bsky.social Diversity of topics, interdisciplinary environment and excellent platform support! Recommended!

1/6 This November, the Institute of Molecular Genetics, the leader in vertebrate functional genomics in Czechia, open a call for applications for its Director (starting 1.5. 2027). Whoever would seriously think about it, please, contact me. Thanks for RT. img.cas.cz/en/

ElmoFire.gif @mads100tist.bsky.social @nkonst4.bsky.social @ijmonod.bsky.social Looking forward to having Dr. Mad Scientist (AKA Joaquin) grace our humble institute! 🐟🧪

Someone’s gotta tell the Spelling Bee crew about genomic imprinting disorders

Trump probably heard the Sinclair Lewis quote “when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying across” and said fuck that, just make me Jesus