Christmas has come early. Fantastic to see this beautiful study from Peter Rugg-Gunn's lab at The Babraham Institute published today. Congratulations to Matteo Mole, Sarah Elderkin, Irene Zorzan and all other authors! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

🚨Our story is published! Same bones but + dissection of MERVL’s role integrating signals from #ZGA factors, & + about pathological DUX4 activation of NOXA #TEsky. Thanks to all revs for their helpful comments improving the ms. Even #rev3 - until they ghosted us 😜 www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....

🚨 New paper out! A human epiblast model reveals how dynamic TGF‑β signalling controls epithelial identity in early mammalian development Here is the full paper: rdcu.be/eSWEs 🧵 A twittorial: THREAD

Very happy to share our paper rdcu.be/eUImj out today in @natcellbio.nature.com 🎉🎉🎉 We uncover an unexpected role for endogenous Xist RNA in regulating X-linked genes that escape X-inactivation.

Join us for the 2026 Glycolipid & Sphingolipid Biology Gordon Research Conference (GRC). 📍 Renaissance Tuscany Il Ciocco (Italy) 🗓️ March 22 - 27, 2026 Theme: "Molecular Codes of Cell Identity and Recognition" #LipidResearch #Sphingolipids #GRC2026 #ScienceConference #Lipidtime

Attending #EMBOevoChromo25 next week? Our Reviews Editor @ingridtsang.bsky.social will be attending - feel free to talk to her about the journal or @biologists.bsky.social activities!

The new issue @cp-devcell.bsky.social brings the final form of our opossum heterochrony work www.cell.com/developmenta... And it also brings two great papers from @oliveringe.bsky.social @santoslab.bsky.social and @tobyandrews.bsky.social @rashmi-priya.bsky.social 🙌 great #DevBio from @crick.ac.uk

Happy to present TOGA2, developed by Yury Malovichko @ymalovichko.bsky.social, the faster, memory-efficient & more accurate TOGA1 successor (github.com/hillerlab/TO...). And annotations, orthologs & gene loss/dup data generated with 4 references for 883 placental mammal and with 5 refs for 676 ...

Check out our latest issue where we interview Cassandra Extavour, who studies the evolution of the genetic mechanisms employed during early animal embryogenesis to specify cell fate, development, and differentiation at Harvard University. www.cell.com/current-biol...

TE x ZFP = Evolution! Writing this with Olga @orpsf.bsky.social & Didier @trono-lab.bsky.social was a major highlight of my 🇨🇭sabbatical. Such a treat! 🍫Hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoy piecing it together.

Thrilled to share our new review in Current Opinion in Genetics & Development on TE driven innovation in gene regulation🤘. I am honored to be part of this with two major TE aficionados @cedricfeschotte.bsky.social and @trono-lab.bsky.social #TEsky #TEworldwide authors.elsevier.com/c/1m6MC,LqAZ...

Welcome to Day 3 of #EMBOMobileGenome 🙌🏼 While this morning's session is already underway, here's a few snaps from yesterday's 🔸last minute breakthrough talk 🔸 ➡️ 'Transposable element co-option drives transcription factor neofunctionalization' presented by Olga Rosspopoff (EPFL, Switzerland)

Had an absolute blast presenting my “Last Minute Breakthrough talk” at #EMBOmobilegenome today! 🔥 What an incredible crowd, the energy in the room was unreal. Huge thanks to the organizers for selecting me and to everyone who came, asked questions, and made it such a fun session! 🙌

An iPSC-derived heart muscle cell assembling sarcomeres videoed through a spinning disk confocal microscope by Burnette Lab graduate student, Emma Koory. Alpha-actinin-2 is shown. Colors denote Z slices (red-bottom; green-middle; blue-top). Movie length- 40 hours.

Welcome to Day 1 of 'The mobile genome: genetic and physiological impacts of transposable elements'! 🧬 The opening remarks by Julius Brennecke accompanied by his fellow scientific organisers: 🔹Déborah Bourc'his 🔹Josefa González 🔹Joseph Peters #EMBOMobileGenome

“The bad review will come from your list of suggested reviewers”

Really excited to present the results of a fantastic collaboration with Jesse Veenvliet @jesseveenvliet.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de @poldresden.bsky.social 🤩 We find a unique mechanism for body axis elongation in mammals, different from other vertebrate species ➡️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

📣 New preprint! Stoked to share a fantastic collaboration with @campaslab.bsky.social! We discover a unique mammalian mechanism for body axis elongation using mouse and human gastruloids, and confirm central findings in mouse embryos. Check out the 🧵 👇 @mpi-cbg.de @poldresden.bsky.social

🧠 The Lipid #Brain Atlas is out now! If you think #lipids are boring and membranes are all the same, prepare to be surprised. Led by @lucafusarbassini.bsky.social with Giovanni D'Angelo's lab, we mapped membrane lipids in the mouse brain at high resolution. www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

How do embryos develop robustly despite variability in gene expression, cell properties, and tissue growth? In our new review, we explore how optimal selection of coupled parameters can contribute to robustness in development. Have a look at the article: doi.org/10.1016/j.tc...

🚨 New paper alert on telomeres! 🚨 Something different from the group! Thanks to Yuxin, a talented student in the lab, we used long-reads in 75 human trios to study telomeres and their inheritance.

We lost another Gem of a scientist: www.cam.ac.uk/research/new... His work inspired so many of us, such a brilliant mind and a kind human Apart from rewriting our fundamental understanding of cell identity, his love for science is equally legendary

New preprint from the lab! We discovered a transient fluidization in the basal region of human forebrains by tracking microdroplets in cerebral organoids.This “basal fluidization”, absent in gorilla and mouse, may contribute to greater surface expansion in human forebrains 1/ doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🔬For the 2025 Fête de la Science, Institut Curie opens its doors to the public! Follow the steps of Marie Curie’s research in Paris and explore the fascinating world of biology. ⏩https://www.fetedelascience.fr/la-fete-de-la-science-2025-l-institut-curie

⚠️ Paper alert: Using a novel CRISPR screening approach, we mapped the entire regulatory network controlling Xist—key for X-chromosome inactivation. 👉 We discover how sex and development signals are decoded at a single gene locus. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 👇 Bluetorial

🧵1/ Excited to share our new paper introducing a new #singlecell assay: scTF-seq, a high-throughput single-cell approach to explore how transcription factor (TF) dose shapes cell identity and reprogramming outcomes. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... Big congrats to the entire team @EPFL & @SIAT_China

Vertebrate Genome Evolution. Annual Symposium of the @louisjeantetfdn.bsky.social Foundation in Geneva. Free access on site and on line. Great speakers for a super interesting topic. #SvantePaabo #HenrikKaessmann organisers 🙏 See you there! @biology-unige.bsky.social @genevunige.bsky.social

3rd lab meeting I’m presenting at this year! After two during my sabbatical on my experiments (Helaine & Mekalanos labs), today finally in MY OWN lab 🎉 So much fun to share new work done w/ fantastic technicians Laurie, Sandrine, Loriane & bioinformatician Alexandre. Bonus: cake served by the lab 🍰

🚀 Excited to share scPortrait! Led by Sophia Mädler & Niklas Schmacke w/ the Mann lab — a new @scverse tool for standardized single-cell image data. Enables ML-ready extraction, >1B cell processing, cross-omics, & cancer macrophage insights. 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

EEE meeting is BACK! Early Embryogenesis & Epigenetics conference in Berlin 02/2026. Checkout great program and over 12 slots for (not so) short talks for submitted abstracts!. Early registration now open - w.molgen.mpg.de/embryo2026

And from other labs’ work this is really cool: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Some (+)ve news to lighten another heavy weekend: our latest preprint (c/o Mattiroli + Ramani labs) is up! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A tour-de-force by 1st authors Bruna Eckhardt & @palindromephd.bsky.social, focusing on chromatin replication. RTs welcome; tweetorial in 3,2...(1/n)

❓Can a father’s environmental exposures before conception influence their offspring? We systematically tackled this - identifying effects of paternal age, environment and genetics on early embryos - as well as confounding influences www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

First-grader raises $1,000 for axolotl research, meets her scientist hero — and maybe gets taste of what she wants to do when she grows up

Really excited to share our latest work led by @mattiaubertini.bsky.social and @nesslfy.bsky.social: we report that cohesin loop extrusion creates rare but long-lived encounters between genomic sequences which underlie efficient enhancer-promoter communication. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A🧵👇

Huge congratulations to Thomas on this well-deserved award. His PhD defense last week was outstanding too - a great moment. He’ll on the lookout for a postdoc position soon…spread the word!

Our work exploring a new explanation for the regulation of Hoxd genes and the #fin-to-limb transition. 🧪 It was an absolute joy working on this w/ @aurhin.bsky.social and @homeobox.bsky.social @denisduboule.bsky.social @neilshubin.bsky.social #evo-devo #InHoxWeTrust

Out today. 🙏 again to everyone for this wonderful piece of work, in particular to Aurelie @aurhin.bsky.social Chase @chasebolt.bsky.social and Brent @homeobox.bsky.social. 🙏 also to the Harris lab @fish4walking.bsky.social and @neilshubin.bsky.social @biology-unige.bsky.social @college-de-france.fr

Very happy to have contributed to this review on "non-CG" #methylation in animals now out in @natgenet.nature.com. Working again with @obog.bsky.social and Tirsa is always a pleasure. We think this not so well studied form of methylation should be more widely considered, please read: rdcu.be/eFAEk

Very happy to share the work of Huanhuan Li et al. While not a natural embryo, you might not have known that if I hadn’t told you. (1/3)

Please re-post: Interested in chromatin and its evolution? Good news! There's still time to join us in beautiful Catalonia (9-12 Dec) to discuss eukaryotic, bacterial, archaeal, and viral chromatin and how it all hangs together meetings.embo.org/event/24-evo... Abstract deadline: 30 September

Legend David Baltimore died yesterday. He understood the way things should work: "the real contribution of MIT is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. It takes ideas seriously, but the people are relatively informal. They are not self-aggrandizing the way academics can be."

Here are all the talks I attended and sketched at #ESEB2025 ! Only a fraction of the 642 speakers at the conference 😮 I had an absolutely amazing week chatting about lots of fascinating science #sciart #eseb #esebcongress @eseb2025.bsky.social

1) I am delighted to present this terrific tour de force research conducted by my post-doc Dr. Gayani Senevirathne @gayani.bsky.social and published today in Nature - www.nature.com/articles/s41...

My feather cell type paper is finally out! doi.org/10.1111/ede.... We’ve packed a ton of stuff into this paper but I’ll go through some highlights in this thread!

📢 PhD Thesis defense 📅 Sept. 19th 📍 IJM @thomasbalan.bsky.social ( @sandraduharcourt.bsky.social Lab ) will defend his PhD thesis "Characterization of proteins involved in the dynamics of histone modifications during programmed DNA elimination in Paramecium tetraurelia" ➡️ buff.ly/V8vzSsT

Very happy to share that our paper on stem cell culture conditions is now out! doi.org/10.1371/jour... We found that modulating mESC culture conditions influences gastruloid elongation and lineage specification, and helps with making the protocol more reproducible in our hands! more below 🧵⬇️ [1/7]

I hope people start to realize that one cannot be bat shit crazy in one part of their professional life and very competent in another. It just does not happen. www.science.org/content/blog...

1 To predict the behaviour of a primate, would you rather base your guess on a closely related species or one with a similar brain shape? We looked at brains & behaviours of 70 species, you’ll be surprised! 🧵Thread on our new preprint with @r3rt0.bsky.social , doi.org/10.1101/2025...

No new genes needed to fly - just rewire what you have! 🦇🧬 Great new paper from the labs of @fany-real.bsky.social @stemundi.bsky.social @dariloops.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s415... #EvoDevo #SingleCell #BatWings