Very excited to share our newest findings! A very long team effort pursued by multiple team members -to frantically reproduce everything over and over-, we show mTOR-Polycomb synergy at promoters of developmental master regulator TFs in ESCs prior to their expression. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New Preprint alert!🚨 Super excited to share my postdoc work now on BioRxiv. How does PRC2 loss lead to developmental failures? We combined rapid protein degradation with TLS embryoid models to uncover temporal and lineage-specific dependencies 🧬. Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/2026.04.18.719361

Our most recent work on the “function and evolution” of #nuclear-speckles is now online at Cell @cp-cell.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... Read the thread👇 for the highlights of our findings.

I’m thrilled to share that my PhD work has been just published in Cell. After a long and bumpy ride, we uncovered the core function of nuclear speckles -splicing of GC-levelled exons- and traced the evolution of this gene architecture and condensates themselves to amniotes.

Tugce Aktas@aktast.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Our most recent work on the “function and evolution” of #nuclear-speckles is now online at Cell @cp-cell.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... Read the thread👇 for the highlights of our findings.

We wrote a review on Transposable Elements (TEs) and almost all aspects of TE silencing and their roles in biological processes & disease. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation of transposable elements and their roles in development and disease - Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology

Transposable elements (TEs) comprise nearly half of the human genome. This Review discusses transcriptional and post-transcriptional mechanisms that repress TE activity, how TEs escape this suppressio...

nature.com

⚠️ I am really excited to share the work of Anastasios Balaskas, an excellent PhD candidate in the lab, with the wider world. Tasos made a significant advance: generating a stem cell-based embryo model that contains both posterior and anterior neural tissues of the late-stage gastrulating embryo.

This is a piece that I and @karsten-rippe.bsky.social discussing a lot, and a topic that is very close to my heart. The editors @naturerevgenet.bsky.social gave us the stage to do so, and the final version of our review is now available under this link: rdcu.be/erP1u A short thread follows 1/n

Check out a technology feature in @nature.com by Elie Dolgin regarding our recent 'Killswitch' publication www.nature.com/articles/d41... Thank you for the comments and first impressions by Rick Young, Isaac Klein, @danfengcai.bsky.social @superscijew.bsky.social @yaotianzhang.bsky.social

‘Killswitch’ protein lets scientists study immobilized cellular droplets

Synthetic peptide fixes biomolecular condensates, revealing how these enigmatic cell structures actually work.

nature.com

Nature research paper: Probing condensate microenvironments with a micropeptide killswitch https://go.nature.com/4mMlGyc

Probing condensate microenvironments with a micropeptide killswitch - Nature

Targeting a non-natural micropeptide ‘killswitch’ to several biomolecular condensates altered condensate compositions and revealed condensate functions in human cells

go.nature.com

Work is a collaboration with @matthewkraushar.bsky.social, @aktast.bsky.social and the MPIMG Service Groups FACS, microscopy, sequencing and mass spec, as well as researchers from Austria, the US and Switzerland. Link to the publication: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In @nature.com Yaotian Zhang and @henriniskanen.bsky.social from the Hnisz Lab discovered a micropeptide, the "Killswitch," which alters the physical state of biomolecules in condensates. This tool solidifies dynamic, liquid-like droplets, affecting their function. --> www.molgen.mpg.de/4884827

A bottleneck for studying the biological function of biomolecular condensates is unavailability of tools to selectively probe them within living cells. @nature, researchers report one such tool, showcasing its use in various contexts including disease. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Probing condensate microenvironments with a micropeptide killswitch - Nature

Targeting a non-natural micropeptide ‘killswitch’ to several biomolecular condensates altered condensate compositions and revealed condensate functions in human cells

nature.com

What controls condensate composition and function beyond binding stoichiometry? We show that condensate microenvironments play a key role, and can be probed by a micropeptide killswitch in live cells. www.nature.com/articles/s41... in @nature.com ‬ with @yaotianzhang.bsky.social Denes Hnisz & team.