Major findings from paper linked below:

NEXT TUE: DDD seminar, Feb. 17, 2026 @ 1PM Eastern US: Dr. Annerieke Sierksma (in Dr. Bart De Strooper's group at KU Leuven) will share her recent work on "Polygenic risk for Alzheimer’s disease shapes microglial inflammatory and antigen-presentation programs in vivo". carlocolantuoni.org/seminar

Structural basis for CTCF-mediated chromatin organization https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.06.704447v1

For anyone interested in the history of molecular biology, I cannot recommend Judson's The Eighth Day of Creation highly enough. One of the great book on the history of science. I have two copies because a actually wore out the first one (paperback) www.cshlpress.com/default.tpl?...

Today's DDD seminar "A systematic study of morphogen patterning and its reproducibility in human neural organoids" given by Nadezhda Azbukina (from Dr. Barbara Treutlein's group in Basel) is now online at www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

🆕 ADVANCE ONLINE 🆕 RESEARCH PAPER: Plagl1 and Lrrc58 control mammalian body size by triggering target-directed microRNA degradation of miR-322 and miR-503 By LaVigne et al., and Joshua Mendell ➡️ https://genesdev.cshlp.org/content/early/2025/11/10/gad.353138.125.abstract Josh Mendell HHMI

1/ Our new study, led by Jingwen Ding, examines the role of transcription factors during human neurogenesis to identify gene regulatory networks influencing cell fate, maturation, and subtype specification www.nature.com/articles/s41...

B Lymphocyte Protein Factories produced by Hematopoietic Stem Cell Gene Editing https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.16.699998v1

Very important research to establish African ancestry cell lines! #Neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/cellular-neu...

Scaling perturbations: beyond genome-scale CRISPR screens https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.16.699948v1

Registration for the 2026 NY Area Population Genetics meeting is now open, at events.simonsfoundation.org/e0mEoL?rt=8k.... Registration is free but required; if you are submitting an abstract, note that the deadline is *January 30th*.

System-wide extraction of cis-regulatory rules from sequence-to-function models in human neural development https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.14.699402v1

There's still time to apply to be a 2026 @dev-journal.bsky.social Pathway to Independence fellow For those about to apply for their first independent academic position, the programme offers - mentoring - leadership training - profile rising - networking journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...

Machine Learning enables efficient and effective affinity maturation of nanobodies https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.11.698911v1

Why do some individuals defy their polygenic score? In the largest study of its kind (402k UKB individuals; 7 continuous traits + 3 diseases), we asked: If your phenotype deviates from common-variant polygenic score prediction, what's driving that difference? www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

We had a great experience publishing in Development (doi.org/10.1242/dev....). High-quality reviews, quick turnaround, and our editor (Jim Wells) was very helpful and provided feedback about the reviewers comments.

Dynamic subtype- and context-specific subcellular RNA regulation in growth cones of developing neurons in the cerebral cortex. rdcu.be/eXuwg

NIPBL-mediated 3D genome folding translates enhancer priming into gene activation and safeguards lineage fidelity during embryonic transitions #SingleCell 🧪🧬🖥️ https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.30.686824v1

As usual this time of year, started drafting the list of gene regulation conferences for 2026, enjoy! generegulation.org/conferences-... Know of a relevant event that’s missing? Please reply below

Genome-scale perturb-seq in primary human CD4+ T cells maps context-specific regulators of T cell programs and human immune traits https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.23.696273v1

Very interesting pre-print from Chris Baker's lab at JAX on the mechanistic link between trans-acting genetic variants and heterochromatin formation in mice. #heterochromatin #epigenetics #variants www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our preprint "Predictive design of tissue-specific mammalian enhancers that function in vivo in the mouse embryo" is on bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... . Amazing collaboration by @shenzhichen1999.bsky.social, Vincent Loubiere (@impvienna.bsky.social,@viennabiocenter.bsky.social),... (1/2)

One of the best reviews I read this year...

Hi all! We developed CAD-C to map chromatin organization at high res in yeast. It revealed an unexpected tight alignment: nucleosomes covering the same sequence tend to be associated across sister chromatids. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #3DGenome #chromatin #Cohesin #centromere

Tommy Vierbuchen @tvierbuchen.bsky.social shared his work with us today: "A pluripotent stem cell platform for in vitro systems genetics studies of mouse brain development". see the recording at: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... (more info at www.carlocolantuoni.org/seminar)

Nice preview of our paper by Hanwen Yu and Yan Liu. Generating 3D mouse organoids for cortex development and evo-devo: Developmental Cell www.cell.com/developmenta...

I know Americans overly romanticize Europe but I still think moving to a little house on a canal in the Netherlands could solve like 82% of my problems

NEXT TUE: DDD seminar, Dec. 16, 2025 @ 1PM Eastern US: Dr. Tommy Vierbuchen @tvierbuchen.bsky.social will share his recent work on on cell villages using outbred mice: "A pluripotent stem cell platform for in vitro systems genetics studies of mouse brain development". carlocolantuoni.org/seminar

📢 You won't want to miss our next episode with Dr. @hansclevers.bsky.social! Learn about his return to the @hubrechtinstitute.bsky.social and his experience running the Institute of Human Biology at Roche: https://bit.ly/48sIRIV

Redundancy masks functional specificity of SMARCD paralogs in neurodevelopment https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.05.692564v1

TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque: "This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".

Very happy to see this published! 🎉🎉🎉 Amazing collaboration with Max Yun and her team @maxyunlab.bsky.social @crtd-tud.bsky.social on Axolotl Thymus regeneration. Thanks also to @claireolingy.bsky.social for coverage, and grateful for December cover #scienceimmunology www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We are excited to share our new preprint: SMARCA2/4-Dependent Chromatin Remodelling Establishes Gene Regulatory Programs in Early Human Embryos and Blastoids. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.01.691499v1

High-quality mouse reference genomes [PacBio Long Read genomes of 17 strains] reveal the structural complexity of the murine protein-coding landscape, Cell Genomics. www.cell.com/cell-genomic... Genomes and annotations here: projects.ensembl.org/mouse_genomes/

Last bit of fall still hanging on in Central Park

Don't miss this episode! Dr. @tvierbuchen.bsky.social from @mskcancercenter.bsky.social discusses his work direct reprogramming #fibroblasts into neurons, and PSC models of #neurodevelopment. Check it out: https://bit.ly/48dmghX

Now live, and thanks to @erictopol.bsky.social for organising this!

New work from our lab: a simple motif-based model can distinguish between distal cell type specific regulatory elements with extremely high accuracy - in all metazoans including plants. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our next episode features Dr. @tvierbuchen.bsky.social from @mskcancercenter.bsky.social Tune in tomorrow to hear about his work on next-generation models of #BrainDevelopment. 🧠

I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵

Unified Generation of Regionalized Neural Organoids from Single-Lumen Neuroepithelium https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.18.689013v1

Major new direction in the lab: hacking human cell biology with pathogen effectors (eORFs) - amazing collaboration with @miketilapia.bsky.social lab. Huge congrats to first authors Tomas & He & all co-authors! Check out the pre-print on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The link between the gut #microbiome and autism is not backed by science, researchers say. Read the full opinion piece in @cp-neuron.bsky.social: spkl.io/63322AbxpA#microbiome @wiringthebrain.bsky.social, @statsepi.bsky.social, & @deevybee.bsky.social

There’s a terrific review of CRICK in @science.org tonight, thanks to @adrianwoolfson.bsky.social. The PDF isn’t working right now; I’ll post a screenshot later. Here’s the paywalled html link:

We're very excited to welcome Dr. @sumrubayin.bsky.social from the @gurdoninstitute.bsky.social onto the next episode of the podcast! 🎉 Her lab studies the mouse #cerebellum to better understand the regulation of #neural stem cell behavior. 🧠

Gene editing in "cell villages" enables exploring disease-relevant mutations in many genetic backgrounds https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.08.687374v1

In the most recent episode of the Epigenetics Podcast, we talked with Ryan Corces from @gladstoneinst.bsky.social about his work on the impact of chromatin architecture on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease. #podacst #chromatin #epigenetics Listen here: www.activemotif.com/podcasts-rya...

Our new manuscript, led by Emily Corrigan, examines inhibitory neuron diversity across approximately 160 million years of evolutionary divergence, as part of BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN) developing brain atlas package: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very pleased to share this work from my time as a graduate student with the Greenberg lab. We investigate the molecular function of ZMYND11, a tumor suppressor and chromatin reader which is also a cause of syndromic intellectual disability. Preprint available now: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...