Dear VGZT enthusiasts, Do you—or someone in your lab—work on exciting developmental biology research? Showcase it at VGZT, a global online seminar series connecting developmental biologists across all career stages. Apply here: www.tinyurl.com/VGZT-Nomination

Today in @nature.com, we present our work leveraging functional genomics and human blastoids to uncover a human-specific mechanism in preimplantation development driven by the endogenous retrovirus HERVK. Special thanks to the reviewers whose comments improved our manuscript a lot! rdcu.be/eI3tD

We are excited to announce the first Western VGZT of Season 7! 🎉 🗓️ Thursday, October 2nd ⏰ 9:30 PDT / 12:30 EDT / 16:30 UTC / 17:30 BST / 18:30 CET Our speakers: 👉 Antonia Weberling (@a-weberling.bsky.social) 👉 Sanjay Narayanaswamy (@sanjay-n.bsky.social)

SAVE THE DATE! Join us for the 2025 @anzscdb.bsky.social NSW Branch Cell & Developmental Biology Symposium at the Garvan Institute @garvaninstitute.bsky.social on Wed 5 Nov 2025. Keynote speakers include Dougall Norris, @katequinlan.bsky.social, Silvia Velasco and @ryanlister.bsky.social 🔬🧠🧫

Are digits modified fins, or evolutionary innovations? Read how we tackled this old question from a new angle🧪 A story with @chasebolt.bsky.social, @homeobox.bsky.social and myself, coordinated by @denisduboule.bsky.social from @college-de-france.fr and published in @nature.com today! #InHoxWeTrust

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...

www.nature.com/articles/s41... Our latest paper in collaboration with Mitch Weiss’s lab. We showed DNA methylation turns off fetal globin expression. I’m still not sure how important methylation is in regulating individual human genes but it represses this one.#sicklecelldisease #crispr #epigenetics

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

In a new study, FMI researchers show that two enzymes—KDM2A and KDM2B—act as safeguards in eggs, preventing excessive DNA methylation at gene regions. Without them, abnormal methylation is passed to embryos, repressing genes needed for early development. www.cell.com/developmenta...

Thrilled to share our new paper: "OpenEMMU: A versatile, open-source EdU multiplexing methodology for studying DNA replication and cell cycle dynamics"! We've developed a new resource that make this crucial research more accessible, accurate, powerful and low-cost. www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

You link #phenotype 🦜 to #genotype 🧬 with #comparative #genomics 💻? This #review is for you 📜: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S... We review new #methods, remaining #challenges and #future directions and highlight recent key studies. Thanks @hillermich.bsky.social! Please share! 🙂

ANZSCDB is pleased to launch our Zoom seminar series! Our first seminar kicks off on Thursday August 28th, 2025 at 12pm AEST with Professor Jose Polo and Dr Melanie White. Please register and attend to ensure the success and long-term sustainability of this initiative.

🎉 Another exciting contribution from our lab this summer! 🧬 Nearly complete, gapless genome of the sex-changing central bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps) shed new light on the mystery of reptile sex determination. Proud to be part of this collaborative effort! academic.oup.com/gigascience/...

Activity of most genes is controlled by multiple enhancers, but is there activation coordinated? We leveraged Nanopore to identify a specific set of elements that are simultaneously accessible on the same DNA molecules and are coordinated in their activation. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Delighted to share the peer-reviewed version of our study led by @tomlewin.bsky.social now out in Genome Biology @bmc.springernature.com! We analyzed 64 chromosome-level genomes across 15 animal phyla and found that extensive genome rearrangements are the norm in bilaterians. doi.org/10.1186/s130...

Our featured article: Epigenome dynamics in early mammalian embryogenesis by Adam Burton & Maria-Elena Torres-Padilla go.nature.com/45UA8Ob

🥂Congrats to Gao, Li & co for their new @natcellbio.nature.com study: they derive #trophectoderm stem cells from 32-cell mouse #embryos. These cells represent an early trophectoderm state, develop into #placenta cells and organoids and contribute to blastoid generation. rdcu.be/eAKzp bit.ly/4fyZ9Sg

I'm pleased to share that Leukemia have published our analysis of heterogeneous responses to hypomethylating agents #HMAs in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia #AML www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy to see our latest work out in @molbioevol.bsky.social. We revisit the evolution of 5-methylcytosine across neglected eukaryotic supergroups, establishing an ancestral repressive role silencing genome invaders, both transposons and viral elements👾: academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-... 🧵 1/7

Thrilled to share that our latest work on marsupial heterochrony is now online at @cp-devcell.bsky.social @cellpress.bsky.social @lab-turner.bsky.social @crick.ac.uk We used scRNAseq to understand the asynchronous progression of developmental programmes in marsupials www.cell.com/developmenta...

🚨 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 🧵

Our work bridging enhancer-promoter proximity to phenotypic outcomes in vivo is out! Shout out to @olimpiabompadre.bsky.social, to Marie Kmita's lab, and to all the co-authors. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Finally out! 🥳 Our paper showing how a transposable element (TE) insertion can cause developmental phenotypes is now published @natgenet.nature.com 🧬🦠🐁 Below is a brief description of the major findings. Check the full version of the paper for more details: www.nature.com/articles/s41588-025-02248-5

New online! The evolutionary foundations of transcriptional regulation in animals

We take for granted that our hands have two sides and can articulate in an endless number of ways. But what about a fish’s fin? Can a fish know something “like the back of its fin,” or have its future told with a fin palm reading? Check out this bluetorial to find out 👇🧪🧬🐟 doi.org/10.1101/2025...

I am thrilled to share our preprint where we take advantage of the unique opportunities offered by human blastoids to uncover a human-specific mechanism potentially playing a role in preimplantation 🧵. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Our paper describing the Range Extender element which is required and sufficient for long-range enhancer activation at the Shh locus is now available at @nature.com. Congrats to @gracebower.bsky.social who led the study. Below is a brief summary of the main findings www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/

We wrote a review on Transposable Elements (TEs) and almost all aspects of TE silencing and their roles in biological processes & disease. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Paper alert! I am really pleased to share the final version of the work led by Irène Amblard in the team on a regulatory switch controlling Cdx2 expression during posterior body development! #regulatorylogic #devbio @mrc-lms.bsky.social @imperialmed.bsky.social

⚠️ I am really excited to share the work of Anastasios Balaskas, an excellent PhD candidate in the lab, with the wider world. Tasos made a significant advance: generating a stem cell-based embryo model that contains both posterior and anterior neural tissues of the late-stage gastrulating embryo.

We are delighted to share our new preprint “The evolution of gene regulatory programs controlling gonadal development in primates” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Registration for A-RNA 2025 is now open!!! Join us in September for 3 days of #RNA Science. We have an excellent lineup of invited speakers (www.a-rnameeting.org.au/invited-spea...) & networking events Register: www.a-rnameeting.org.au/registration Early bird rate ends July 30th, 2025 #RNASky

Nature research paper: Maternal iron deficiency causes male-to-female sex reversal in mouse embryos https://go.nature.com/45fG1G1

It was a pleasure to write a N&Vs on @danielibrahim.bsky.social's latest paper in @natgenet.nature.com. Enhancers tend to stay put even if their sequence changes beyond recognition. Quoting Il Gattopardo, everything must change so that everything can stay the same: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Just a nice reminder! 🧪🧬🖥️ I found this GitHub very useful: github.com/cxli233/Frie...

Nature research paper: Molecular basis of positional memory in limb regeneration https://go.nature.com/44OtQj3

We're excited to publish our latest study led by Bryony Leeke @bryonyleeke.bsky.social and Wazeer Varsally, now out in @nature.com 🍾This study focusses on the epigenome of marsupial embryos 🦘 mapping DNA methylation in embryo development to specific embryo events www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵