🦴✨ Invited speaker Douglas B. Menke joins us at #2026SDB in Las Vegas! 🎰 His lab explores how vertebrate limb morphology evolves through changes in gene regulation 🧬🐭 with current work focused on Tbx4 enhancer elements that shape hindlimb development and evolution across species. 🐾✨ #evodevo

1/ Our new study, led by Jingwen Ding, examines the role of transcription factors during human neurogenesis to identify gene regulatory networks influencing cell fate, maturation, and subtype specification www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Dissecting gene regulatory networks governing human cortical cell fate - Nature

Systematic screening of transcription factors reveals conserved mechanisms governing cortical radial glia lineage progression across primates and provides a framework for functional dissecti...

nature.com

I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵

The missing heritability question is now (mostly) answered

Not with a bang but with a whimper

theinfinitesimal.substack.com

A deep dive into how transcription factors shape radial glia fate and clonal dynamics. Manuel Lessi: this work “combines the strengths of primary cultures and pooled CRISPRi perturbation”. #preprint Jingwen Ding & team @brainevodevo.bsky.social #preLight ⬇️ prelights.biologists.com/highlights/d...

Dissecting Gene Regulatory Networks Governing Human Cortical Cell Fate - preLights

A deep dive into how transcription factors shape radial glia fate and clonal dynamics

prelights.biologists.com

Our new manuscript, led by Emily Corrigan, examines inhibitory neuron diversity across approximately 160 million years of evolutionary divergence, as part of BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN) developing brain atlas package: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Conservation and alteration of mammalian striatal interneurons - Nature

An analysis of cell-type diversity in brain samples from a variety of mammalian species, both during development and in adult animals, reveals that the TAC3 initial class of striatal interneurons is c...

nature.com

🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity! We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have: (1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs) (2) better hand dexterity (3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Evolutionary expansion of the corticospinal system is linked to dexterity in Peromyscus mice https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.16.682851v1

I am thrilled to share our latest work: we identified a population of central amygdala neurons that promote the earliest and perhaps most important social behavior: pup suckling!... We also developed new tools for pup neuroscience Work by @Jeff Moore now at USC, a collaboration with @Sam Pfaff lab

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 10mo ago

A genetically-defined population of amygdalofugal neurons promotes suckling and early postnatal growth https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.18.683193v1

“Intraspecific sequence variation and complete genomes refine the identification of rapidly evolved regions in humans” New work on HAQERs, by @rimangan.bsky.social Yanting Luo Craig Lowe @debbysilver.bsky.social @manoliskellis.bsky.social & colleagues 🧪🧬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Intraspecific sequence variation and complete genomes refine the identification of rapidly evolved regions in humans

Humans exhibit significant phenotypic differences from other great apes, yet pinpointing the underlying genetic changes has been limited by incomplete reference genomes and a reliance on single assemb...

biorxiv.org

We’re excited to host @nkschaefer.bsky.social from the Pollen Lab @brainevodevo.bsky.social, UCSF! He’ll present Cellbouncer, a new bioinformatic tool for pooled single-cell processing that yields insights into hominid evolution 🧬 More about the lab 👉 www.pollenlab.org

"Sources said the administration is specifically considering a full termination of federal grant funding for the University of California and California State University systems." Pure vandalism. This could never happen in a country with functioning checks and balances.

Trump preparing large-scale cancellation of federal funding for California, sources say | CNN Politics

The Trump administration is preparing to cancel a large swath of federal funding to California, an effort which could begin as soon as Friday, according to multiple sources.

cnn.com

EMBOMtg Paris May 6-9 @aydoganlab.bsky.social @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social @brunetlab.bsky.social @ebisuyamiki.bsky.social @mwdorr.bsky.social @beyerlab.bsky.social @franckp.bsky.social @janereznick.bsky.social @olmedo-lab.bsky.social @perez-carrasco.bsky.social meetings.embo.org/event/25-dev...

Developmental timing across species: From mechanisms to evolutionary insights

Like choreography, development consists of a highly ordered suite of steps and transitions. Modifying developmental tempo can affect final size and composition of tissues, as well as their plasticity…

meetings.embo.org

Congratulations to Nathan for conceiving and designing this unified demultiplexing toolkit!

Nathan Schaefer@nkschaefer.bsky.social · last yr.

Picture this: you are running a single cell sequencing experiment and want to incorporate cells from different species, individuals, and maybe even perturbations. You process everything together to save time while reducing batch artifacts. You collect data. What do you do now?

We put CellBouncer to the test with a challenging demultiplexing problem of assigning 24 hominid tetraploid composite cell lines generated by Bryan Pavlovic to both individuals-of-origin and identifying the mitochondrial haplotypes present. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Introducing CellBouncer, a unified demultiplexing toolkit built by nkschaefer.bsky.social to check IDs and keep the riff raff out of single cell genomics datasets, including by using genetic variation as an external ground-truth for ambient RNA removal: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excellent preprint by @bhadurilab.bsky.social, offering a metabolic atlas of the early human cortex, & revealing how shifts in metabolic processes regulate cell fate transitions. Very valuable resource to address evolutionary questions 🧪🧠🧫 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Metabolic Atlas of Early Human Cortex Identifies Regulators of Cell Fate Transitions

Characterization of cell type emergence during human cortical development, which enables unique human cognition, has focused primarily on anatomical and transcriptional characterizations. Metabolic pr...

biorxiv.org

Francis Collins, the NIH Director for 12 years, led the Human Genome Project and other NIH efforts for 32 years, resigned today. Key words from his resignation letter www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/u...

By @katherinejwu.com "The NIH... supported 99 percent of the drugs approved in the U.S. from 2010 to 2019. The agency has had a hand in “nearly all of our major medical breakthroughs over the past several decades,” The NIH is in a struggle for its (and our) lives. This is existential to America:

Inside the Collapse at NIH

Administration officials pressured NIH to avoid clear advice from the agency’s own lawyers to restart grant funding now.

theatlantic.com

Check out our new preprint describing CiFi - a method that couples 3C and PacBio HiFi sequencing with low input requirements. We apply it to human GM12878 to better characterize chromatin across repetitive regions, as well as single insect samples (a mosquito and a Mediterranean fruit fly).

bioRxiv Genomics@biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social · last yr.

CiFi: Accurate long-read chromatin conformation capture with low-input requirements https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.31.635566v1

Pleasure to co-edit this issue of Current Opinion on human genetic origins with @steinlab.bsky.social: www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

A new story about our recent paper came out today in the Science section of Forbes! Check it out! www.forbes.com/sites/grrlsc...

Super Enzyme Regulates Testosterone Levels In Male Ruffs

A single gene in the shorebird species known as ruffs controls the levels of testosterone in males, and this in turn affects their appearance and mating strategies.

forbes.com

New preprint 📣! Excited to share the result of several years of work, led by @ellylewerissa.bsky.social & @olivieroleonardi.bsky.social, in collaboration with friends @naelnadifkasri-lab.bsky.social & Giuseppe Testa. On CHD2, a chromatin remodeller, its role in evolution & development [🧵] 🧪🧠🧫🧬

First post on this platform 👋. Glad to reconnect with old friends, and also learn from new contacts. Will post about intersecting themes: human evolution, genetics (esp. aDNA), neuroscience & cognition. Currently focusing on brain organoids and early developmental changes that may have had an impact

Happy to be on Bluesky! Our lab is fascinated by how the brain develops, how this goes awry in disease, and this is co-opted in evolution. A major focus is dynamic spatial and temporal #RNA control in the developing brain. Please see our new review on evolution! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How our brains are built: emerging approaches to understand human-specific features

Understanding what makes us uniquely human is a long-standing question permeating fields from genomics, neuroscience, and developmental biology to med…

sciencedirect.com

1st preprint recommendation here (proud @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social affiliate): @brainevodevo.bsky.social & his team do great, creative work and I like their phylogeny-in-a-dish approach to examine gene regulatory evolution. Here they focus on dopaminergic neurons www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Interspecies Organoids Reveal Human-Specific Molecular Features of Dopaminergic Neuron Development and Vulnerability

The disproportionate expansion of telencephalic structures during human evolution involved tradeoffs that imposed greater connectivity and metabolic demands on midbrain dopaminergic neurons. Despite t...

biorxiv.org

Check out this awesome paper!

Vijay Ramani@vram142.bsky.social · 2y ago

The latest from our group, led by Megan Ostrowski and @martyyang.bsky.social, is now published in final form (www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...! Many thanks to our excellent peer reviewers for suggesting several experiments (including CAF-1 perturbation) to really improve the study =) #epigenetics

@jenellewallace.bsky.social led a preview of two outstanding papers from the labs of Cecile Charrier, Pierre Vanderhaeghen, and @franckp.bsky.social that connect regulation of the tempo of synaptogenesis by the human-specific gene SRGAP2C to ASD-linked genes: authors.elsevier.com/a/1k3583BtfH...

Building on our recent review, Tyler Fair performed CRISPRi-based genetic screens to assign human-specific deletions to molecular and cellular phenotypes: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I learned so much from writing this review led by @jenellewallace.bsky.social . Protracted neuronal maturation is a hallmark feature of human cortex with unknown origins. We are excited that many groups are now making the mechanisms of species differences in timing experimentally tractable:

Jenelle Wallace@jenellewallace.bsky.social · 3y ago

I'm thrilled to announce that the review I wrote with @brainevodevo.bsky.social is now online @Nature Review Neuroscience: www.nature.com/articles/s41... We cover mechanisms of prolonged human neuronal maturation, integrating lessons from model organisms with studies on species differences.