We’re really excited to announce that CroCoNet, our framework for cross-species network comparisons, is now out in Genome Biology! 🎉 If you work with scRNA-seq data from multiple species and want to make meaning comparisons while accounting for noise, check it out: doi.org/10.1186/s13059-026-04152-5

Come and join Nobel laureate Paul Nurse, President @royalsociety.org, and philosopher Christof Rapp @caslmu.bsky.social @lmu.de in exploring one of the most fundamental questions in science: What is Life? Save the date: 17 April, 16:15📍LMU, main building register: info@cas.lmu.de, www.cas.lmu.de

Sunny greetings from Evogen2026! Thanks for all the great talks and evolutionary insights 🧬

Even the lab dogs are feeling festive 🎄🐾 Merry Christmas from the Hellnardos!

🎉 Big congrats to Fiona Edenhofer for defending her PhD! 🎓 In her thesis on the evolution of GRNs, she performed cross-species CRISPRi screens and helped establish primate iPSC lines. Fiona was key for many social events and brought the Kölsch to Munich. We will miss you and wish you all the best!

📢 Seminar Announcement We’re excited to welcome Jörg Beckmann (Nuremberg Zoo) for a talk on the new roles of modern zoos — from research to conservation and beyond. 🗓️ 12 Jan 2026, 4 PM 📍 LMU Biozentrum, Lecture Hall B01.019 See you there! 🦒🦍

Out now: we’re happy to share our new preprint on CroCoNet (Cross-species Comparison of Networks), a framework for robust comparative network analyses. 👉 doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Hellnardos at 13th GSCN conference @gscnoffice.bsky.social. We are excited about the next 3 days of stem cell science! 🧫

🎉 Big congrats to Philipp Janssen for defending his PhD! 🎓 He’s been a key part of the lab, contributing to many projects, including scRNAseq background and cross-species cell type comparisons, and always ready with new ideas (& coffee). We’re sad to see him go but excited to see what comes next!

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

Big congratulations to @pascalstuempfl.bsky.social, who successfully defended his Master’s thesis “Gene Network Conservation Metrics – Development and Benchmarking” last Friday! It’s been a pleasure having you in the group, and we’re excited to see what comes next — well done, Pascal! 🎉👏

I am thrilled to finally share our new preprint on prime-seq2 🚀 We improved one of the most cost-efficient bulk RNAseq protocols out there to end up with +60% usable reads. Check it out: doi.org/10.1101/2025... a🧵1/9

🎉Excited to share our new preprint: “Improving RNA-seq protocols” We introduce a systematic approach to maximize usable reads in RNA-seq. With this, we created prime-seq2, improving one of the most cost-efficient bulk RNAseq protocols. 👉Check it out: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Improving RNA-seq protocols

Bulk and single-cell RNA-seq are powerful tools for transcriptomic analysis, providing insights into many aspects of molecular and cellular phenotypes. Costs constrain the amount of biological insight...

doi.org

Meet the TAs’ offices (5/5) ✨ Ines takes care of all the details that keep things organized 📑 Mrs Zhao is running the secretary ⛰️ Karin is mostly retired, but still comes in to help out 🧫 Sara is our greatest help in cell culture & ordering Together, they make everything work smoothly 💙

Office (4/5): Welcome to the PIs offices We are handling dogs, budgets, people, projects and databases. Ines with Elly is running the dry lab Wolfgang with Mo is running the wet lab It’s such a privilege to work with all these wonderful people ❤️ and we have the best jobs we can imagine.

What do zombies 🧟, hostages ⛓️‍💥 and orphans 🧸 have in common? The „Wandertag“ of the Hellnardos in escape rooms! Can you guess who was in which room?

Office introduction series (3/5): We are the single cell squad (scQUAD) 🙌 ⛓️ Dana links peaks to genes 🕸️ Anita compares gene regulatory networks across primates 🎛️ Pascal tunes conservation metrics

Office (2/5): Welcome to the Pee-to-Profile Office! 🧪 Johanna developed a protocol to reprogram iPSCs from primate urine cells, 🧠 Manqi uses them to make neurons to study FOXP2, 🧫 Eva differentiates them to macrophages for cross-species comparisons and 📈 Daniel extends prime-seq to profile them all!

This is the beginning of our office introduction series (1/5): Meet the office of Leo, Antonia with Wilma and Felix Leo 🧠 maps FOXP2 brains Antonia 🧫 reprograms cross-species cells Felix ⚙️ drives Part 2 of every project Wilma 🐶 heads cable-integrity testing by chewing #LabLife #BlueskyScience

🎉 50 years of the Faculty of #Biology - and 20 years of interdisciplinary work at the #Biocenter! “Biology today is a big data science,” says Professor Stibor. AI, biodiversity loss & synthetic biology will be key topics of the future.📖 To the interview: www.lmu.de/en/newsroom/...

New paper from the group! 📃 doi.org/10.7554/eLif... We investigated orthologous cell types in primate EBs and found that marker genes don't transfer well across species. Check it out for insights into cross-species scRNA-seq and explore the data in our shiny app: 🔎 shiny.bio.lmu.de/Cross_Specie...

🚨New preprint from @bonevlab.bsky.social 🚨: What are the key epigenetic mechanisms that drive species-specific gene regulation during primate neurogenesis - and how do they contribute to the evolution of the human neocortex? Here’s what we discovered 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

3D Epigenome Evolution Underlies Divergent Gene Regulatory Programs in Primate Neural Development

The expansion of the neocortex is a hallmark of human evolution and is closely linked to neural stem cell biology. Yet, the epigenetic mechanisms driving divergent gene regulation during primate neuro...

biorxiv.org

The Enard/Hellmann group is now on bluesky 🦋 We are looking forward to reconnecting with everyone here and to welcoming new followers. Let’s keep up great science interactions online!