New Online! Modulating the degree of X-inactivation escape to establish causal links to sex-biased disease

Modulating the degree of X-inactivation escape to establish causal links to sex-biased disease

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, Published online: 29 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41580-026-01007-6Gene escape from X-chromosome inactivation can cause sex-biased diseases. A workflow is presented to help find escape genes and experimentally manipulate their expression.

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It was a pleasure to write this Comment with @sarahhoelzl.bsky.social before she "escaped" the lab after a very successful Ph.D. 😊 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Modulating the degree of X-inactivation escape to establish causal links to sex-biased disease - Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology

Gene escape from X-chromosome inactivation can cause sex-biased diseases. A workflow is presented to help find escape genes and experimentally manipulate their expression.

nature.com

We are offering Postdoc & PhD positions 🥼 If you are interested in the intersection of X chromosome inactivation, epigenetics, aging, sex-biased disease, and allele-specific multi-omics, feel free to reach out or share this with interested candidates. More info: portal.mytum.de/jobs/wissens...

Excited to share a new preprint from the lab led by @lukekoblan.bsky.social and William Colgan in which we describe our efforts to define a quantitative cell fate map of mouse embryogenesis! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Proud of the lab team 🎉 @alessia-karasani.bsky.social won 1st prize for her poster 🏆 and @sarahhoelzl.bsky.social presented her PhD work at #EESSexDifferences.

Explore aspects of X chromosome biology in EMBO Workshop "Dosage compensation and evolution of the X chromosome" in #Sapporo, JP, 19–22 Oct 2026. Early registration/Abstract submission deadline: 15 Jun/1 Jul https://meetings.embo.org/event/26-x-chromosome #EMBOXChromosomeEvolution #EMBOevents 🧪

Very happy to share our paper rdcu.be/eUImj out today in @natcellbio.nature.com 🎉🎉🎉 We uncover an unexpected role for endogenous Xist RNA in regulating X-linked genes that escape X-inactivation.

Escape from X inactivation is directly modulated by Xist noncoding RNA

Nature Cell Biology - The authors show that increased Xist RNA levels can induce de novo silencing of genes that normally escape X inactivation. SPEN depletion prevents the silencing of escape...

rdcu.be

📣 Yesterday our study uncovering the ancestry bias in gene annotations was finally published in @natcomms.nature.com! www.nature.com/articles/s41... If you work in human genetics or transcriptomics, do not miss our tweetorial!👇 @guigolab.bsky.social @bsc-cns.bsky.social @crg.eu

Long-read transcriptomics of a diverse human cohort reveals ancestry bias in gene annotation - Nature Communications

Current human gene annotations are predominantly based on individuals of European ancestry. Here, the authors use long-read RNA sequencing across diverse human populations to reveal ancestry-specific ...

nature.com

Melé Lab@melelab.bsky.social · last yr.

Do you work in 💫human genetics💫? Have you ever worried about what’s inside your gene annotation GTF⁉️ WELL, YOU SHOULD! 😱 Especially when studying a genetically diverse 🌍 cohort! 🔴We discover that gene annotations are European-biased 👉 impacting downstream analyses! Don't miss this thread🧵⬇️ 1/13

Giving a seminar today @ethz.ch on our new X-reactivation findings during aging—back at the institute where I started my PhD 10 years ago. Can’t wait to see some familiar faces!

📣 SAVE THE DATE Next X-inactivation meeting in Sapporo, Japan, 19-23 October 2026. Visit x-inactivation-meeting.org to join our mailing list. 🧬 speakers @dandergassen.bsky.social @marnieblewitt.bsky.social @heard65.bsky.social @crougeulle.bsky.social @sexchrlab.bsky.social @zhouqi1982.bsky.social

New paper from the lab: we’re using long-read sequencing to disentangle isoform complexity at allele-specific loci 🧬💡 Here, we combine the PacBio Iso-Seq workflow with the established WhatsHap phasing approach to assign long reads to the correct allele in polymorphic F1 mouse hybrids.

Cracking the code of the non-coding genome via allele-specific genomics? Can we link non-coding elements—like lncRNAs and enhancers—to their protein-coding target genes, and in doing so, connect overlapping non-coding disease variants to their protein-coding counterparts?

📢 Paper Alert: tinyurl.com/yzy2d864. We characterized tRNA-overlapping lncRNA loci = tROLs! tROL perturbations silence codon-biased genes in inter-chromosomal proximity. tROLs bridge the non-coding and coding genomes. @sickkidsto.bsky.social @uoftpress.bsky.social

tRNA-overlapping long non-coding RNA loci repress codon-biased genes

Ahmed et al. define tRNA-overlapping lncRNAs (tROLs). tROLs in gene-dense regions interact between chromosomes and depend on each other’s transcription. tROL perturbations silence codon-biased genes i...

tinyurl.com

Our study on a male-essential microRNA and the evolution of other dosage compensation mechanisms in birds is now out in Nature! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A male-essential miRNA is key for avian sex chromosome dosage compensation - Nature

Birds have evolved a unique sex chromosome dosage compensation mechanism involving the male-biased microRNA (miR-2954), which is essential for male survival by regulating the expression of dosage-sens...

nature.com

🗞️Our June issue is live!📷 This month, we're featuring work on editing epigenetic age, somatic mutation, senescence, Alzheimer’s biomarkers and much more. Read it all here: nature.com/nataging/vol...

We are so happy to be on the cover @sarahhoelzl.bsky.social 🎉 The cover depicts the Three Fates, who manipulate the threads of life and death. The Fates are shown as three older women, unraveling the threads of the inactive X chromosome during aging. www.nature.com/nataging/vol...

Why do women experience aging-related diseases differently than men? A new study shows that with age, genes on the inactive X chromosome can reactivate – potentially influencing conditions like #dementia and #autoimmunity: go.tum.de/987255 #genetics #aging 📷 @dandergassen.bsky.social

Silent X chromosome awakens with age

In aging female mice, genes on the second X chromosome become active again. This could be an explanation for sex differences in aging humans regarding disease.

go.tum.de

We're excited to publish our latest study led by Bryony Leeke @bryonyleeke.bsky.social and Wazeer Varsally, now out in @nature.com 🍾This study focusses on the epigenome of marsupial embryos 🦘 mapping DNA methylation in embryo development to specific embryo events www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵

Divergent DNA methylation dynamics in marsupial and eutherian embryos - Nature

A study reports on the DNA methylation dynamics during embryogenesis in marsupials, showing that these differ from those occurring during embryogenesis in eutherian mammals.

nature.com

Our new contribution to the quest to find causal GWAS genes! Sam Ghatan from my lab at @nygenome.org led a systematic comparison of eQTLs and CRISPRi+scRNA-seq screens. TL;DR: they provide highly complementary insights, with ortogonal pros and cons. 🧵👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Do you work in 💫human genetics💫? Have you ever worried about what’s inside your gene annotation GTF⁉️ WELL, YOU SHOULD! 😱 Especially when studying a genetically diverse 🌍 cohort! 🔴We discover that gene annotations are European-biased 👉 impacting downstream analyses! Don't miss this thread🧵⬇️ 1/13

Long-read transcriptomics of a diverse human cohort reveals widespread ancestry bias in gene annotation

Accurate gene annotations are fundamental for interpreting genetic variation, cellular function, and disease mechanisms. However, current human gene annotations are largely derived from transcriptomic...

biorxiv.org

I’m incredibly proud to share the results of our lab’s first project, leading to the exciting discovery – Aging promotes reactivation of the Barr body at distal chromosome regions – now published in @nataging.nature.com! 🔗 tinyurl.com/3jkzzy7d

Online now!✨RESEARCH: @sarahhoelzl.bsky.social et al demonstrate that aging promotes reactivation of the inactive X chromosome in mice, and catalog escape genes using multi-omics @dandergassen.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s43... rdcu.be/ekm0I

Excited to share our lab’s first review, focusing on RNA localization! #RNA #RNAlocalization genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Decoding subcellular RNA localization one molecule at a time - Genome Biology

Eukaryotic cells are highly structured and composed of multiple membrane-bound and membraneless organelles. Subcellular RNA localization is a critical regulator of RNA function, influencing various bi...

genomebiology.biomedcentral.com

I am super proud to share the first Andergassen Lab preprint! Here, we introduce a new framework to decode the non-coding genome, led by the outstanding work of @hasenbeint.bsky.social and co-authors Sarah Hölzl, Stefan Engelhardt @tum.de👇🧵