Happy to share our new review on X-chromosome reactivation in the germline, just published in @biochemsoc.bsky.social Transactions! We highlight the latest discoveries on how this epigenetic mechanism unfolds during mammalian germline reprogramming. Hope you enjoy the read 😊

🔥 How does CTCF shape enhancer–promoter communication? In our new preprint, we systematically test how the position and orientation of CTCF binding sites (CBSs) influence gene regulation at the mouse Sox2 locus. 🧪 full paper can be found here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Some good, critical questions by Hannah Fry @fryrsquared.bsky.social here! www.youtube.com/watch?v=--CP...

Integrated small and long RNA sequencing reveals piRNA mediated transposon repression during human oogenesis www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hot off the press from the Zamore & Gainetdinov labs: Cleavage of mRNAs by a minority of pachytene piRNAs improves sperm fitness 🏊️ buff.ly/O40kIi3 #piRNA #mRNA #fertility

Friends Davor Solter and Azim Surani receiving the wonderful Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize for Genomic Imprinting👏 👍 @Frankfurt Germany. With official talks from politicians using words like Education, Knowledge, Democracy 🙏 @maxplanck.de @gurdoninstitute.bsky.social

We are looking for a Postdoc to join our lab at @oxfordbiochemistry.bsky.social. This is a dry-lab focused post on the computational analysis of long read single-cell sequencing data to understand the role of transposable elements (TEs) in early development. my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru... #TEsky

Considerations for the future of in vitro gametogenesis in fertility care - @hannahlandecker.bsky.social @uclacrshe.bsky.social @uclamcdb.bsky.social @uclastemcell.bsky.social go.nature.com/4l2e9en

Holy macaroni!!!

Happy to share our latest paper. Our findings uncover a unique chromatin architecture and spatial chromosome arrangement in gonadal germ cells and document that alongside global DNA demethylation, the germline epigenetic reprogramming involves reorganisation of the 3D genome.

Job alert! 📣 I’m looking for a research assistant to join my new team @idrm.ox.ac.uk Were using #zebrafish to understand gene-environment interactions that shape the heart 🫀generate natural diversity 🐸🐭 and contribute to congenital defects ❤️‍🩹 Full info below, and please share! 🫶🏻 bit.ly/467TO0M

📣 I'm excited to share our latest preprint! We adapt and characterise a neurosphere-based CNCC differentiation protocol, and demonstrate utility for quantitative phenotyping and craniofacial disease modelling! 🧫 Read about Array-CNCC here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @uoe-igc.bsky.social

Array-CNCC: precise aggregation and arrayed plating facilitate quantitative phenotyping of human cranial neural crest cells and craniofacial disease modelling https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.18.696654v1

Issue 12 is complete! Cover: Members of BiO's community, including a founding Editor, past & present Editors-in-Chief, our academic Editors and some of the reviewers from BiO's Fast & Fair peer review initiative. We would like to thank them all. bit.ly/4piig6y

Interested in the unexpected? How about a link between piRNAs and maternal histone mRNAs … Great collab with @sebastianfalk.bsky.social, @koenig-lab.bsky.social and Florian Steiner. #piRNA #histone #mRNA #maternal #RNAbiology #RNASky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our paper on the newest version of the Registry of candidate cis-Regulatory Elements (cCREs) is out 🧬 Huge thanks to the many collaborators, experimentalists, analysts and software developers who made this work possible — truly a team effort! A "meme-torial" of the science is coming soon 👀

This went under the radar but answers a fundamental question in Epigenetics... From many hundreds of olfactory receptor genes, each neuron selects expression of only single one (near-randomly). How? Outstanding work from Mathieu Boulard and colleagues www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Helping the next generation of scientists find their voice. 📣 Discover how @seahsamantha.bsky.social empowers students through her path from preLights to Executive Editor of the Journal of Emerging Investigators. Interview: prelights.biologists.com/news/from-pr...

I don't think scientists should work for anyone else. They should work for discovery and for their own curiosity. –Maria Leptin, ERC President @marialep.bsky.social on 'The Night Science Podcast'

Another envelope protein in the human genome. Expressed in the placenta, of course.

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/

🚨Reposts appreciated‼️If I had read this PhD offer five years ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated for a second to apply 😉 Passionate about gene regulation, chromatin, and developmental biology? Just contact @radaiglesiaslab.bsky.social at @ibbtec.bsky.social 🧬✨ #PhD #3DGenome

Research Highlight: Mouse In vitro oogenesis breaks free of the ovary www.cell.com/developmenta... @cp-devcell.bsky.social

🚀 Looking for talented PhD students! Join us in 🇸🇬 Singapore for 1-2 years to push the frontiers of AI for Genomics. Work on: 🧬 Cancer genome reconstruction 🧫 Cancer genome & cell foundation models 💊 RNA drug & mRNA therapeutic design #AI #Genomics #PhD 1/5

Learn more in the open access Nature Genetics paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are recuiting two new Associate Professors here in Oxford Biochemistry. Come join us! Reach out to me if you have any questions. Please repost! tinyurl.com/mr3m7bd3

A TE insertion controls throat colour in wheatears. The gene involved (ASIP) is the same one that is epigenetically affected by an IAP insertion the famous Avy mice. As if we needed more reasons to love TEs.

The quest to make babies with lab-grown eggs and sperm. An excellent news feature by Nature: tempered optimism, with critical caveats underscored. And great to see commentary from so many names in the field! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The 'Handler genome' of OSCs, a rare and stably growing cell line that runs a piRNA pathway to silence transposons. Dominik (@86dominik.bsky.social) assembled the genome of this Drosophila cell line. Besides making some cool findings, the goal was to turn this into useful resource for the field.

Read ‘Sperm sequencing reveals extensive positive selection in the male germline’ from @sangerinstitute.bsky.social and collaborators in @nature.com below: nature.com/articles/s41...

It is with great sadness that we share the news of the death of our founder, colleague, mentor and friend, Professor Sir John Gurdon. His vision and dedication will continue to inspire generations of scientists. 🔗 www.gurdon.cam.ac.uk/nobel-laurea...

Sad to hear this. John was a brilliant scientist and also someone who engaged with everyone personally & as equals, especially young scientists and students. www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

So sad to hear the news - John truly was an inspiration to so many, and one of a kind. www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

Very candid responses from Azim Surani here on his initially turbulent scientific journey, & accounts of genomic imprinting and the pioneering of mammalian scRNA-seq. Great to see this put together by Ashley Moffett & @geraldinejowett.bsky.social journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

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

Excited to share our latest News & Views published in Nature! @nature.com rdcu.be/eI2NJ Sherif Khodeer and I discuss how stem cell-based embryo models provide evidence that viral DNA sequences that entered the human genome in the past were repurposed to aid early stages of embryonic development.

I do think this human egg story is being massively overhyped. To be clear, no eggs have been "generated", "created" or "made" from human skin cells - rather, existing human eggs have been given the DNA from skin cells using a kind of cloning 1/

Embryonic signatures of intergenerational epigenetic inheritance across paternal environment & genetic background @jamiehackett.bsky.social et al @embl.org see transcriptome changes in offspring after fertilisation by fathers exposed to gut dysbiosis or western diet www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

New paper from my lab and @jshendure.bsky.social lab! Led by the brilliant @zukailiu.bsky.social and @cxqiu.bsky.social. We tackled how anterior and posterior progenitor cells cooperate to self-organize into an embryonic structure (termed AP-gastruloid). (1/n) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

In vitro fertilisation (IVF) pioneer Bob Edwards was born 100 years ago today. Learn more about how his legacy has contributed to both assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and developmental biology in this Primer by Martin Johnson doi.org/10.1242/dev....

This year @ericmiska.bsky.social lab celebrates 20 years of science! 🥳We marked the occasion with a wonderful gathering of past and present members, sharing memories, discoveries, and friendships. Here’s to the next 20 years of breakthroughs and collaboration🥂 @cambiochem.bsky.social

Our study on the role of LTR5HS and SVAs in regulation of human neural crest migration is now published as peer-reviewed paper on @molsystbiol.org! Congrats to first author brilliant postdoc Laura Deelen, and all the authors involved! @imperialsci.bsky.social www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

✨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/...

Thrilled to share that our Group Leader Prof. Azim Surani, together with Prof. Davor Solter, has been awarded the 2026 Paul Ehrlich & Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize 🎉 for discovering genomic imprinting—a breakthrough that reshaped genetics and launched modern epigenetics.

Functional maps of a genomic locus reveal confinement of an enhancer by its target gene by the @basvansteensellab.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

PIWI clade Argonautes are essential for transposon silencing. Without them, animals are sterile due to massive transposon activity. But how does piRNA-guided target interaction translate into silencing? PhD student Júlia Portell Montserrat has an intriguing answer www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Clearly a hot topic - 2 timely review articles on human primordial germ cell specification in the span of 5 days! In @biologists.bsky.social (Development) doi.org/10.1242/dev...., & @natrevmcb.nature.com below:

Great to see this commentatry on the need for systematic single-cell mapping of cis-regualtory elements: from Yi Xiang, Tim Stuart and Jay Shin @astar-gis.bsky.social @jayshin.bsky.social

Schematics of our increasing knowledge of in vivo human primordial germ cell development, and a summary of the exciting hPGCLC maturation protocols: @dev-journal.bsky.social @biologists.bsky.social

Austin Smith points out that naive pluripotent cells in the embryo only self- renew rarely, if ever. In response to some heckling from the faculty, he says “You can call ES cells artifacts if you want, but they’re still bloody marvellous” 😃 #SCSS2025