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

record 17,058 Marie Curie proposals in 2025 vs. 10,360 in 2024!!! the reason is pretty obvious, but wow that is a huge jump marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/news/msca-po...

Excited to share our Review on human PGC development covering the latest in vivo observations & in vitro developments, esp. in the last 5 years. Have a read! journals.biologists.com/dev/article/... From: @astar-gis.bsky.social @ki.se Warwick University, @gurdoninstitute.bsky.social

Emerging principles and models of human primordial germ cell development In this Review, Navin B. Ramakrishna @navinbr.bsky.social, João Pedro Alves-Lopes and Wolfram H. Gruhn examine how recent insights guide in vitro models of human gametogenesis: journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Edith Heard our new CEO shares ten lessons from her life in science, from curiosity, courage and coffee to the secrets of our genetic code. www.crick.ac.uk/news/2025-09...

Here it is shown that BMAL1 🧬 helps protect early embryonic cells by keeping jumping genes in check — a role beyond circadian rhythms that may safeguard adults from premature aging. www.nature.com/articles/s41... (2/2)

Just out in @dev-journal.bsky.social - important discussion on the availability of human embryos for research. Thanks @marta-shahbazi.bsky.social and co-authors for contributing this: journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

1/11 In @science.org: A new perspective on how our intestines renew. Cells are not “pushed out” by crowding or die from apoptosis. Instead, cells play a mechanical tug-of-war, where weaker cells extrude, reframing gut renewal as force-regulated. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

2/11 The intestinal lining renews every few days. Old cells are shed by extrusion—a process essential for barrier integrity and linked to diseases like IBD. But what actually triggers extrusion in mammals was unclear.

I’m super happy to present the first discoveries of the RIKEN-Cambridge Joint Crop Symbiosis Research Team, based in Japan 🇯🇵 doi.org/10.1101/2025... A thread 👇

Do you have friends with questions about fertility? Egg freezing? Embryo research? IVF? Stem Cells? If you're UK-based this Friday, the BBC are hosting a Question of Science and tickets are still available. PLUS you can submit a question in advance to ask the panelists 🎤 shorturl.at/BCTW7

New paper from our lab! We found that LINE-1 transposons contribute to early human brain development. Funded by @asapresearch.parkinsonsroadmap.org www.cell.com/cell-genomic...

9) Using spatial transcriptomics and single cell transciptomics and epigenomics, we then reveal in humans at the key moment of the shift, that chondrocyte cell type-specific regulatory elements harbor tens to hundreds of human acceleration regions (HARs) indicating this shift is highly polygenic.

The peppered moth is a textbook example of natural selection, its colours shifting with the soot-darkened trees of the Industrial Revolution. But the genetic secret behind its “dark” form took 150 years to uncover: a new “jumping gene” that rapidly took over the population. 🦋 tinyurl.com/4zrc4e93

"The Genetic and Epigenetic Landscape of Male Infertility" by Emma R. James, Kenneth I. Aston, and colleagues "[T]he testis is one of the most transcriptionally and translationally complex tissues in the human body..." FREE access till Oct. 10th here: authors.elsevier.com/a/1leHvcQbJF...

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👇

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...

I am absolutely delighted to share our work describing a new *recessive* condition caused by variants in #RNU4-2. Yes, that #RNU4-2! tinyurl.com/3j9r56s8 @rociorius.bsky.social @yuyangchen.bsky.social @gregfindlay.bsky.social @dgmacarthur.bsky.social @cassimons.bsky.social @nickywhiffin.bsky.social

Allele frequency selection and no age-related increase in human oocyte mitochondrial mutations www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Hats off to lead author Tony Lim who drove this project from writing the fellowship application, to establishing new techniques in the lab. We developed a reversible self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) system that encodes innate immune suppression directly within saRNA. Next step, in vivo!

I believe that over the past ~ two decades, since the breakthrough papers on UHRF1, this is the first reported DNA methylation phenotype of its close paralog, UHRF2 (and not for lack of trying). Congrats to Ambre Bender and Michael Weber on this fantastic study! www.nature.com/articles/s41...