Two weeks ago, Lukas (PhD student) and I had the opportunity to attend the iPSC Keystone meeting in Japan. Not only did Lukas deliver a great presentation, the meeting was also a great chance to reconnect with old faces and meet new ones. We even found some time to explore Kyoto and Tokyo 🇯🇵⛩️✨!

Last Friday, I had the privilege to present the latest FunGen Lab work at the Symposium of the Marguerite Marie Delacroix Foundation. This symposium brings together researchers working on neurodevelopmental disorders, creating an inspiring environment. Grateful to be part of this community 🌟.

👇 Highly recommend applying if you want to join a great team and work on a high-profile, inter-university project! #postdocjobs

📣Job Alert: We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher with hands-on experience in neural tissue culture, preferably neural organoids, for a collaborative project on Alzheimer's disease and MS between KULeuven, UHasselt and UGent in Belgium. Deadline August 31: www.ugent.be/en/work/scie...

📣 In our recent study, we present a minimally invasive RNA-seq protocol using short-term cultured peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), with and without cycloheximide treatment. A big shout-out to Laurenz and Erika who were instrumental in carrying out the study! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excellent poster talks from all Ghent PhD students at #eshg25! Well done 👏🏻👏🏻

Excellent talk by my colleague @elfridedebaere.bsky.social on cis regulatory elements in eye diseases at #eshg25. If you did not attend her session, I highly recommend to watch it on the virtual platform. Enhanceropathies research at Ghent University is on 🔥

Excellent flash talk by #FunGen PhD student @lisahamerlinck.bsky.social ! If you missed it, you still have the chance to check out her poster P10.003 tomorrow between 16:00-17:00. #eshg25

If you are interested in a postdoc position on neural organoids in the lovely city of Ghent, Belgium, and happen to be at #eshg25, feel free to come and have a chat with me. Or, if you know other interested people, feel free to share with them.

🗣️ Quote of #ESHG2025 (so far) "Who licks bone !?!" 🦴 - Johannes Krause Anyone have that on your bingo card? Well apparently archeologists do, to distinguish bone from stones and it causes problems in DNA sequencing. 🤔

@ahoischen.bsky.social insisting junior researchers get the mic at #ESHG2025 🎤👩‍🔬👨‍🔬

On my way to #eshg25! If you are interested in the work we do at the FunGen lab, check out the flash talk on Sunday and poster on Monday by @lisahamerlinck.bsky.social or come and have a coffee with team members @michael-b-vaughan.bsky.social, @eedhaene.bsky.social or me. Hope to see you there!

📣Job Alert: We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher with hands-on experience in neural tissue culture, preferably neural organoids, for a collaborative project on Alzheimer's disease and MS between KULeuven, UHasselt and UGent in Belgium. Deadline: June 23 Link: www.ugent.be/en/work/scie...

Really enjoying Neurogenomics25 @humantechnopole.bsky.social Excellent space, excellent talks, excellent coffee! I'll be sharing some of our research ( @svergult.bsky.social ) on the ability of Clinically Accessible Tissues to accurately reflect neuronal gene regulation ( poster #66) #neurogen25

If you are at the Neurogenomics conference in Milan, go and check out the posters of @eedhaene.bsky.social and @michael-b-vaughan.bsky.social. #neurogen25

Paper Alert!! Last year we reported on ZFHX3 loss of function (LoF), today we report that also ZFHX4 LoF is associated with an NDD. Great collaboration the ZFHX4 consortium, excellently led by María del Rocío Perez Baca and María Palomares. As always great collab with co-supervisor Bert Callewaert.

Final talk of this year's #GRD25 conference, also selected from submitted abstracts, is Eva D'haene from Ghent University talking about "Non-coding structural variants disrupt a critical regulatory region steering FOXG1 transcription during early neurodevelopment"

📣 New preprint from the FunGen lab, see below 👇👇👇! This research was led by two incredible ladies in my lab, postdoctoral researcher @eedhaene.bsky.social and PhD student Lisa Hamerlinck. Nice to see how a team effort of years finally came together. If you want to know more, read Eva's 🧵 below.

Today is #rarediseaseday2025 Rare diseases are rare, but there are many people living with a rare disease. By brighten up our workplace with shades of pink, blue, green, and purple 🩷💙💚💜 we, the FunGen team, want to help raising visibility for rare diseases. #ShareYourColours

To all great women in science: Happy #WomenInScienceDay! Glad to have met many great female scientists and hope to meet many more 🥰!

Prof Joe Marsh and I have a PhD project as part of the 2025 Edinburgh Doctoral College Scholarship: "Integrating AI, Biophysical Modelling and Experimental Validation for Enhancer Variant Interpretation". Closing date for applications is 25 April 2025. Please get in touch if you are interested! 🧬🧠

Now out in @science.org w/ @jshendure.bsky.social we present 'Genome-shuffle-seq': a method to shuffle mammalian genomes and characterize the impact of structural variants (SVs) with single-cell resolution in one experiment. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

As always, great meeting!! 👇🏻👇🏻

I want to provide an overview and perspective of rare disease genomic testing, which is a real success story of science impacting health - a science which goes back over 100 years and yet is still striding forward and much more to come.

Christmas lunch @FunGenLab 👉🏻 Combining what we love the most: Great food 🍜 and discussing great science 🧠! A big shout out to our master students for their excellent presentations 👏🏻, well done!

🌟 Yesterday, the FunGen lab was present @ the Marguerite-Marie Delacroix's Conference on "Current Directions in Autism Research and NDDs". 🌟 Nore rocked her poster presentation concerning organoids & @eedhaene.bsky.social gave an excellent talk on our 3D genome research. 👏 Go Team FunGen! 👏

We're looking for a talented scientist 👩‍🔬👨‍🔬to join our group @stjude.bsky.social! Help us develop/characterize #stemcell/#organoid models of #raredisease #epilepsy disorders. 🧠🧬🧠🧬 Details below - join us! talent.stjude.org/careers/jobs...

I am surprised at this actually. Elife will stop getting an IF. www.science.org/content/arti...

I couldn't spot a starter pack for rare disease / clinical genomics, so I started one: go.bsky.app/SUWZ9Hw Very much a work in progress, and biased by who I have already found here, so please suggest people to add! Self-nominations encouraged. #ClinicalInformatics #genomics #bioinformatics 🖥️🧬

Last week the FunGen lab was present at the ASHG meeting in Denver! Rocío (lab member) gave a great talk, we saw some great talks and met some great people! And there was snow ❄️!