Our new preprint is out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We show that GRN benchmarks commonly used can overestimate performance due to negative-sampling choices, sometimes allowing simple degree-based baselines to rival more complex GNNs. A reminder of why bias-aware evaluation matters!

It’s a story of marks written early, carried through a long silence, and then suddenly speaking again. A bit like memory itself.

After a long journey, I'm happy to share that my PhD work is finally published in Nature Communications. Grateful to all my co-authors!

Congrats on this exciting story @sandrani.bsky.social and team!!

absolutely losing it at my 14yo's biology homework

Excited to announce that our peer-reviewed manuscript is online in the Development journal @dev-journal.bsky.social. The manuscript was much improved through the peer-review process, and I am grateful to the reviewers for their valuable feedback. journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

We have just published a tribute to John Gurdon, reflecting on his scientific legacy and the profound influence he had on generations of developmental biologists. The piece is available open access in Nature Communications: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are honored to share our Perspective in Nature Communications, reflecting on the legacy of John B. Gurdon. Beyond his discoveries, his generosity and curiosity inspired a community of scientists-we remember and celebrate his lasting impact. #JohnGurdon #Xenopus #NatureCommunications

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

Pls Repost: I am putting together an edition of “Methods in Molecular Biology” focused on early development, encompassing gastrulation. I am making a list of potential authors for chapters. If interested, please contact me - An excellent opportunity for trainees to co-author with their advisors.

No offense but I think we underestimate how many of our current problems, both cultural and political, are downstream of the decline in reading, the decline in learning and the loss of interest in the humanities.

Been there, done that!

Anthony A. Hyman will become EMBL’s next Director General. He joins EMBL from @mpi-cbg.de in Dresden. He is also Professor of Molecular Biology @tudresden.bsky.social, and was a group leader at EMBL Heidelberg from 1993 to 1999. www.embl.org/news/people-...

Do you have an exciting new chromatin/transcription story that you'd like to share with the #FN community? Fill out this form to be considered for a talk in our Jan-June 2026 schedule! forms.gle/TBi38UgYxPAB... Please repost and share!

I'm guest-editing a collection on "Enhancer-promoter interactions" at Genome Biology. Please send us your exciting stories! link.springer.com/collections/...

Art class today. The theme was underwater, so I couldnt resist painting my model organism #Xenopus laevis (African clawed frog). This is done in encaustics, which is a mixture of beeswax and resin 🐸 #Art #SciArt 🧪

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT📣: I haven’t been this excited to be part of something new in 15 years… Thrilled to reveal the passion project I’ve been working on for the past year and a half!🙀🥳 (thread 👇)

AI has so much potential for interpreting biological images, and yet, annotated biological datasets needed to train AI tools remain scarce. If you generate microscopy data or develop AI tools to interpret it, check it these new guidelines: www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/t... #bioimaging #microscopy 🧬🔬

What do you know about version control?🔁 It’s how researchers keep their projects organized, track every change, and never lose work again. Self-Paced Tutorial of the Day: Introduction to Version Control within RStudio ⚙️ lmu-osc.github.io/Introduction...

It is with great sadness that the University shares the news of the death of Professor Sir John Gurdon, founder of the @gurdoninstitute.bsky.social Read our tribute to the visionary Nobel Laureate and watch an interview from 2012, just after he won: https://bit.ly/4mM8o3r

A good day to remember John Gurdon’s school report from his biology master at Eton

Dr. John Gurdon, a British biologist and Nobel laureate who in the early 1960s introduced a paradigm-shifting method of cell manipulation that led to the world’s first cloning of a large mammal, a sheep named Dolly, died on Tuesday at 92.

🚀 #NAKO Launches the Pilot Phase of Its Trusted Research Environment 📝 Health-focused companies can now apply for secure, GDPR-compliant access to Germany’s largest long-term population health data. 👉 Read more: t1p.de/q0i64 @nako.de #HelmholtzMunich #DataProtection #HealthResearch

Very excited to share an excellent review from @teresa-urli.bsky.social, published one week before her PhD defense! We did a deep dive into the fascinating biology of the variant Polycomb complex, PRC1.6 (1/5) journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

Do not forget to apply to the FEBS Advanced Lecture Course: 6th Danube Conference on Epigenetics (19–22 October 2026, Budapest, Hungary. Will be a great meeting as always. Check out the site: network.febs.org/posts/febs-a...

🎊 Congratulations to Juliane Glaser (@julianeg.bsky.social) and Valentin Flury (@flurylab.bsky.social) on being awarded each an @erc.europa.eu Starting Grant! – #ERCStG www.ie-freiburg.mpg.de/6057908/2025...

Post doc: "this is the worst rejection I ever got" PI:

If someone you know buys into claims about "genetic optimization" of embryos using polygenic scores of cognition, just send them our 2024 paper on Beethoven & musicality. We wrote it to help communicate limits of individual-level genetic predictions & complexity of links between DNA & behaviour. 🧪👇

An infant with an inherited life-threatening metabolic condition has responded to a tailored therapy that uses CRISPR to correct a specific mutation go.nature.com/3Jmdbuy

New paper on the role of H3K4me3 at enhancers! We (led by Haoming Yu) used dCas9 epigenome editing to add H3K4me3 to intergenic enhancers. This was (1) sufficient to turn up transcription at open, active regions and (2) has no effect on target gene transcription. genesdev.cshlp.org/content/earl...

We are excited to announce the Otto Meyerhof Prize, awarded by #Boehringer Ingelheim and the #GBM for e𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲-𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐫 scientists conducting research in Germany: - PhD no more than 8 years ago - Nominations and self-applications 💶 €5000 prize money 📅 Deadline 30.11.25 📩 Submit to: [email protected]

A great thing about working in a lab is being involved in lab meetings and witnessing everyone's projects take shape. A single project may seem to go slow but all projects together is impressive. Caroline Bartman discussed this on the podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/2... @cbartman.bsky.social

This is not a HiC map! Ever wondered if multiple enhancers get activated simultaneously? We measured chromatin accessibility on thousands of molecules by nanopore to create genome-wide co-accessibility maps. Proud of @mathias-boulanger.bsky.social @kasitc.bsky.social Biology in the thread👇

Nature research paper: Establishment of chromatin architecture interplays with embryo hypertranscription go.nature.com/3UumSJJ

🍹Kefalopoulou, Rullens et al. develop Dam&ChIC to assay #chromatin state at two different time points in the same cell. The method was used to study the reorganization of LADs during cell division and X chromosome inactivation. bit.ly/4fGJFMi

1/n Fun journey continues: Our new @cp-cellstemcell.bsky.social paper out on how the Inherent & Dormant Plasticity of Mouse Naive PSCs can be "Exaggerated" to Directly form ~E8.5 Transgene-Free (TF) Mouse SEMs & WITHOUT inducing 8-16-Morula-like "Embryo Founder Cells". www.cell.com/cell-stem-ce...

With constantly changing norms around work-life balance I no longer know if "Working 9 to 5" is a song about a difficult situation or an ideal situation

Our paper is now out in final form at Nature Genetics! For those who missed the preprint, we used large-scale Perturb-seq targeting transcription factors to push primary fibroblasts into diverse transcriptional states, including those observed in cell atlas studies.

Our latest research is online in the @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social! 🧬🎉 🔎 We have developed a novel, single-cell real-time approach to monitor R-loop generated TRCs, and we have shown R-loop-mediated, replisome-controlled transcription repression. www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

🔬 Stephan Hamperl ‪uncovered how clashes between #gene reading & #DNA copying inside cells drive disease. Their tools reveal new insights into #cancer, ageing & development. Read more 👉 europa.eu/!H7RtjQ #FrontierResearch #GeneEditing #Genetics #Oncology @www.helmholtz-munich.de

In case you've ever wondered, I talked with @amjeve.bsky.social about science, myself, and the future of #DevBio as part of the Pathway to Independence Fellowship @biologists.bsky.social 🧪 journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Research highlight from Cell Stem Cell: Hallmarks of totipotent and pluripotent stem cell states www.cell.com/cell-stem-ce...

Happy to share our new paper out today in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social in collaboration with @tobiaswarnecke.bsky.social @akihisaosakabe.bsky.social about how evolution can do big things with small changes. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Online Now! Chemical reprogramming of human blood cells to pluripotent stem cells #stemcells

The Confocal Room

The ancestral protein of the CRISPR–Cas9 system — less than half the size of its famous descendant — is engineered into an effective DNA-targeting tool that can be delivered by AAV as an epigenome editor for in vivo gene silencing #NBTNV go.nature.com/43JRgno rdcu.be/eyorl

Ready to lead pioneering research that bridges systems-level investigations of biological systems to molecular mechanism? The EMBL Molecular Systems Biology Unit in Heidelberg is hiring a Group Leader!

🚨 New paper alert 🚨 I am excited to share our new work on epigenetic enhancer priming in early mammalian development genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... Fantastic collaboration with Wolf Reik’s team, with key contributions from many others, led by the excellent Chris Todd. Short 🧵

Happy to share our latest work🍾 🥳 PhD student Sophie Dürauer discovered together with many wonderful collaborators that the ubiquitylation of DNA-protein crosslinks promotes their cleavage by SPRTN more than 100-fold 🧬🔧