Happy to share that my postdoc work with @jobdekker.bsky.social is out! rdcu.be/eWHD2 We characterize interphase chromatin folding programs with distinct modes of mitotic inheritance and identify the chromosome-intrinsic capacity to form a microcompartment of active CREs during mitotic exit.

Do transcriptional activators work on any promoter? Our data says no. 🙅‍♂️ Despite driving ~2/3 of mammalian genes, CpG island (CGI) promoters have remained a puzzle. We identified >50 activators that are exclusively compatible with this promoter class. 🧬

Read our new preprint where we uncover a hierarchy in human PIC assembly and establish a quantitative framework that connects factor exchange kinetics to the regulation of Pol II activity in living human cells. doi: doi.org/10.64898/202... By A. Oravecz and our collaborators @molinalab.bsky.social

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)

🚨Our work on the impact of DNA replication on 3D genome is out in Genome Biology: replication-dependent loop extrusion by sister-forks, wave of replication, no evidence for large-scale replication factory. Great collab with @aurelepiazza.bsky.social. More here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Exciting new paper out! @allanaschooley.bsky.social and Sergey Venev led this project that let to the discovery of two chromosome folding programs: one inherited via mitotic chromosomes and one mitotic inherited through the cytoplasm! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Took us a bit, but proud of this published version. We now examine the genetic interaction of phosphorylation with oligomerization and where bulk and phospho-Swi6 localize. Wonder if chromatin affinity tuning to enable Suv39 H3K9me3 spreading is a conserved mechanism ? doi.org/10.1093/nar/...

🚨New paper out! In our @MolCellNews paper, we solve a piece of the puzzle of how our genome folds. We found the two specific molecular "brakes" in the CTCF protein that stop DNA loop extrusion. One of the final pieces of my PhD! tinyurl.com/29uuc5by

I am happy to share that my postdoctoral work in the @gerlichlab.bsky.social at @imbavienna.bsky.social is finally out 🎉! Our study reveals how cohesin guides focused and accurate homology search. Read more 👉 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Follow along for key insights and updates! 🧵

📣 I hereby make my Bluesky debut to announce that our work linking DNA binding affinities and kinetics 𝘪𝘯 𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘳𝘰 and 𝘪𝘯 𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘰 for the human transcription factor KLF1 just got published in Cell! @cp-cell.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... Key findings in a thread (1/6):

Here is a copy of last year's Twitter thread explaining our preprint - jump to (21) for the new stuff 👀 Synergy between cis-regulatory elements can render cohesin dispensable for distal enhancer function now revised and journal accepted at www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵👇

The hinge bypass gate paper is finally out! doi.org/10.1038/s414... We show how loop-extruding SMC complexes can maintain DNA entrapment while bypassing obstacles on DNA — including transcription machinery & potentially other SMCs. A lucky convergence of 3 projects lead to the initial discovery!

Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

To probe gene-scale chromatin physics, we built 96-mer (20 kb) arrays with defined histone marks. Combining single-molecule tracking, AFM imaging, and developing in vitro Hi-C, we saw how specific modifications dictate chromatin structure and dynamics. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

📣 Paper alert! I am delighted that our paper exploring the impact of Neanderthal-derived variants on the activity of a disease-associated craniofacial enhancer has been published in Development today! journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Our latest paper has just been published in Cell! doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... We developed a new method called MCC ultra, which allows 3D chromatin structure to be visualised with a 1 base pair pixel size.

Happy to share our latest publication, in which we show that the arrangement of nucleosomes around CTCF sites contributes to higher-order organisation of chromatin into TADs: www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

Here, we show that the unique regulatory landscape of ecDNA enables an ancient LINE to resurrect and act as an enhancer of Myc. This was so fun with @katerinakraft.bsky.social and @mattjones.bsky.social and others. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share our paper on dynamics of microcompartments during M-to-G1 is now published in @natsmb.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41... Compared to biorxiv, published includes new analysis from James Jusuf and Viraat Goel (from @andersshansen.bsky.social lab) on transcriptional spiking

The TArgeted Cohesin Loader (TACL) paper was just published. Happy that we were able to contribute to this really exciting project! If you want to learn how targeting cohesin to defined loci in the genome affects the local chromatin environment and transcription, look no further! rdcu.be/eLiT5

What is a promoter? And how does it work? We very happy to share our latest work trying to understand enhancer-promoter compatibility. I am very excited about the results of @blanka-majchrzycka.bsky.social, which changed the way I think about promoters www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Ever wondered what drives enhancer-promoter specificity? Why would an enhancer activate one gene rather than another neighboring one? Check our latest preprint, led by @mmasoura.bsky.social, to find out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

If you’re interested in exploring the relationship between chromatin organization and epigenetic memory using chromatin tracing microscopy, my group is recruiting a talented PhD student 🥳

⚠️ 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

Many enhancers that drive tissue-specific gene expression are already connected to gene promoters in human pluripotent cells. In a new preprint, we share some clues about when, how, and why this happens! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Today I am so pleased to present our work on how chromatin remodelers affect mesoscale chromatin organization. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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

❓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....

New preprint from the lab !! Loop extrusion may provide mechanical robustness to chromatin. Great work by Hossein Salari. @cnrs.fr @lbmcinlyon.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

📝New preprint! #MicroSky 🕰️We chart the full, synchronized lifecycle of a predatory bacterium using Hi-C, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq & microscopy. 🧬We uncover dramatic shifts in nucleoid architecture & transcription, tightly coordinated with predation. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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🧵👇

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...

Asking BlueSky for help: For a review, I am trying to accurately credit the first paper that measured pairwise 3D distances between 2 pieces of DNA on the same chromosome (or cosmid). Is Trask 1989 the first? I know of earlier single-locus papers (1982). www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

✨Exciting news: the main story of my PhD is out in Science! Together with Christine Moene @cmoene.bsky.social, we explored what happens when you scramble the genome—revealing how Sox2’s position shapes enhancer activation. 📖 Read the full story here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Our Boettiger lab paper on live-cell imaging of DNA motion across genomic scales is out! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

On the mystery of distal enhancer-promoter communication

New preprint from our lab! What can we learn about the properties of gene regulatory elements by CRISPR’ing a random set of accessible sites in human cells? Find out here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 👇 1/

Our chromatin scaling paper is now out in its peer-reviewed form! 🎉 We added some controls, statistics, and a new introduction to better contextualise our findings. Overall a much-improved version we hope! (see my earlier thread for the preprint background) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Excited to share my postdoc work, out on bioRxiv today! Histones package DNA into nucleosomes to form the building blocks of chromatin, but how modular and programmable is this system? 1/9

Excited to share our preprint w/Gordana Wutz, Iain Davidson, Leonid Mirny, Jan-Michael Peters www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Evidence that PDS5A/B limits NIPBL-cohesin life w/effects on CTCF boundaries & chrm compartments, +mechanisms of compartment-extrusion interplay & cohesin regulation by PDS5

Very proud of our paper on "scrambling-by-hopping" LADs, which was just published: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... Congrats to Lise Dauban and the rest of the team – this was a real tour-de-force!

Is euchromatin really “open”? Our new study @bioRxiv suggests otherwise. Using super-resolution imaging @shiori-iida.bsky.social‬ @masaashimazoe.bsky.social reveals: Euchromatin forms condensed domains in live cells. Cohesin constrains them and prevents domain mixing. www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Congratulations to Masahiro Nagano on his new paper on STAG3-cohesin. STAG3-cohesin has a much shorter residence time which leads to altered 3D genome organization and STAG3-cohesin is important for male germ cell differentiation. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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...

Absolutely epic

#Preprint alert! 📣 We are thrilled to share the work led by Lara Zorro-Shahidian and Lucio di Filippo, in which we show that #MLL2 controls gene expression in both #ESC and upon #differentiation by facilitating the #enhancer like activity of #LINE1 elements www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

We're excited to share our new preprint, "Joint decomposition of Hi-C maps reveals salient features of genome architecture across tissues and development", led by Thomas Reimonn. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share the latest work from the lab led by @eharo84.bsky.social, in which we have used synthetic biology to explore the mechanisms by which different types of long-range enhancers ensure robust and precise developmental gene expression www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Histone Acetylation Differentially Modulates CTCF-CTCF Loops and Intra-TAD Interactions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.29.667515v1

Ligesh Theeyancheri, Jen Schwarz, and I have a new preprint out presenting a nonequilibrium mechanism that can spatially segregate dense polymer from less compacted polymer, e.g., heterochromatin and euchromatin. arxiv.org/abs/2507.17883