Podcast: Is embryo selection allowing parents to ‘build-a-baby’? bbc.com/audio/play/w...

BBC Audio | The Global Story | Is embryo selection allowing parents to ‘build-a-baby’?

Some fertility startups promise a future free from genetic disease. Is that scientific?

bbc.com

Thank you @natgenet.nature.com for this nice Research Briefing www.nature.com/articles/s41... on our recent paper reporting live-cell measurements of Sox2 promoter bursting kinetics when varying its genomic distance from the SCR enhancer 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The genomic position of an enhancer modulates bursting dynamics of the cognate promoter - Nature Genetics

We show that, in a genomic locus with minimal complexity, the distance between promoter and enhancer modulates the frequency of clustered transcriptional bursts. Thus, besides the nucleotide sequence,...

nature.com

🎨 job alert 🐠 Come join us! We have two positions open! These are part of our @erc.europa.eu funded project on the mechanisms underpinning convergence of colour patterns in cichlid fishes! Closing date: 16th August. Postdoc: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc... Technician: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

Callipterus Cichlid Collecting Shell

ALT: Callipterus Cichlid Collecting Shell

static.klipy.com

Paying peer reviewers works. Expanded Fast & Fair experiment @biologyopen.bsky.social: • 5.5 vs 37.7 working days to decision with reviews • ~3 vs ~9 reviewer invitations per manuscript • no reduction in editor-assessed review quality • similar acceptance rates www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Human embryo editing against disease is unsafe and unproven — despite rosy predictions www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Human embryo editing against disease is unsafe and unproven — despite rosy predictions

Pitfalls of heritable genome editing undermine theoretical benefits.

nature.com

Absolutely thrilled 💣 to share our preprint 🖨️: "Mapping active cis-regulatory elements from transcription initiation events”. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We introduce nucCAGE and PRIME to identify active cis-regulatory elements (CREs) and disease-associated, non-coding variants.

Meet our Preprint Editors We are pleased to welcome our first group of Preprint Editors to our editorial team, responsible for handling our 'In preprints' articles. #preprints journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/ed...

Published in @natmed.nature.com today, Stephen Mayhew, Dave Allan and David Roblin share ten lessons learned from a decade of translating science at the Crick towards health and societal impact. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper out in @cp-cellstemcell.bsky.social. We uncover unexpected complexity in how metabolism changes when the embryo implants or when stem cells exit naive pluripotency, revealing a central role for dynamic TCA cycle rewiring in cell fate decisions. www.cell.com/cell-stem-ce...

TCA cycle rewiring underpins histone acetylation sourcing and cell-fate transitions during exit from naive pluripotency

Using carbon tracing and functional experiments, Kafkia, Pladevall-Morera, et al. show that TCA cycle rewiring underlies mouse embryo implantation and the exit from naive pluripotency. In this context...

cell.com

Online Now: Gut microbiota modulation of regulatory DNA elements revealed by massively parallel functional characterization Online now:

Gut microbiota modulation of regulatory DNA elements revealed by massively parallel functional characterization

To maintain metabolic homeostasis, the liver rapidly adjusts gene expression in response to nutrients, endotoxins, and microbial metabolites derived from the gut. Zaratiana et al. identify microbiota-responsive cis-regulatory elements in hepatocytes. Their results suggest that microbial metabolites modulate the activities of host regulatory DNA elements to shape hepatocyte transcriptional programs.

dlvr.it

A biochemical curiosity: it is much more straightforward to go enzymatically from 5mC > T than it is to go from 5mC > C

Laurence Ettwiller@ettwiller.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Those amazing #phages 🦠 figured out 5mC chemistry before we did: 📄 Out today in @MolecularCell we describe a 5mC-selective #deaminase family in environmental phage genomes with broad applications for #5base #sequencing #epigenetics #DNAmethylation #genomics #NGS 🧬🧪 www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

🚨 Why can’t mammals regenerate limbs like frog tadpoles or salamanders? In our new paper in @science.org , we show that species-specific oxygen sensing acts as a gatekeeper for initiating limb regeneration 🐭🐸 🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #EvoDevo

Saddened to learn of the death of Greg Hannon, a former CSHL colleague and giant of modern molecular biology www.cruk.cam.ac.uk/news/in-memo...

Super excited that our two companion papers on saturation genome editing (SGE) of RNU4-2 and discovery of a novel recessive neurodevelopmental disorder (NDD) were published yesterday 🥳 SGE experiment: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Recessive NDD characterisation: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵

An interesting read: Using synthetic enhancer combinations to switch on lethal payloads only when in the correct target cancer cells. Article: www.nature.com/articles/s41... News&Views: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Synthetic super-enhancers enable precision viral immunotherapy - Nature

Synthetic super-enhancers enable specific delivery of anticancer payloads, achieving tumour elimination after a single dose in a mouse model of aggressive glioblastoma.

nature.com

Scientists have identified a set of genetic variants that could help to explain why responses to obesity drugs vary markedly from person to person go.nature.com/4ccK07M

Why obesity drugs work better for some people: these genes hold clues

Study of almost 28,000 people also identifies genetic variants that raise the risk of gastrointestinal side effects from GLP-1 medications.

go.nature.com

Happy to share our new review on X-chromosome reactivation in the germline, just published in @biochemsoc.bsky.social Transactions! We highlight the latest discoveries on how this epigenetic mechanism unfolds during mammalian germline reprogramming. Hope you enjoy the read 😊

🔥 How does CTCF shape enhancer–promoter communication? In our new preprint, we systematically test how the position and orientation of CTCF binding sites (CBSs) influence gene regulation at the mouse Sox2 locus. 🧪 full paper can be found here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Some good, critical questions by Hannah Fry @fryrsquared.bsky.social here! www.youtube.com/watch?v=--CP...

Would you ’design’ your baby using AI? - BBC

YouTube video by BBC

youtube.com

Integrated small and long RNA sequencing reveals piRNA mediated transposon repression during human oogenesis www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hot off the press from the Zamore & Gainetdinov labs: Cleavage of mRNAs by a minority of pachytene piRNAs improves sperm fitness 🏊️ buff.ly/O40kIi3 #piRNA #mRNA #fertility

Cleavage of mRNAs by a minority of pachytene piRNAs improves sperm fitness - Nature

Most pachytene PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) have no biological function; however, a small population enhances sperm fitness, which has led to their persistence in mammalian evolution.

nature.com

Friends Davor Solter and Azim Surani receiving the wonderful Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize for Genomic Imprinting👏 👍 @Frankfurt Germany. With official talks from politicians using words like Education, Knowledge, Democracy 🙏 @maxplanck.de @gurdoninstitute.bsky.social

We are looking for a Postdoc to join our lab at @oxfordbiochemistry.bsky.social. This is a dry-lab focused post on the computational analysis of long read single-cell sequencing data to understand the role of transposable elements (TEs) in early development. my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru... #TEsky

Considerations for the future of in vitro gametogenesis in fertility care - @hannahlandecker.bsky.social @uclacrshe.bsky.social @uclamcdb.bsky.social @uclastemcell.bsky.social go.nature.com/4l2e9en

Holy macaroni!!!

bioRxiv Genomics@biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social · 5mo ago

In vivo lineage tracing across human tissues using methylation barcodes in the protocadherin gene cluster https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.23.707349v1

Happy to share our latest paper. Our findings uncover a unique chromatin architecture and spatial chromosome arrangement in gonadal germ cells and document that alongside global DNA demethylation, the germline epigenetic reprogramming involves reorganisation of the 3D genome.

Global reorganization of genome architecture at the transition to gametogenesis - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology

Huang, Rigau and colleagues observe major changes in how DNA is organized in early germ cells before they start developing into sperm or eggs. These results show that germline removes structural ‘memo...

nature.com

Job alert! 📣 I’m looking for a research assistant to join my new team @idrm.ox.ac.uk Were using #zebrafish to understand gene-environment interactions that shape the heart 🫀generate natural diversity 🐸🐭 and contribute to congenital defects ❤️‍🩹 Full info below, and please share! 🫶🏻 bit.ly/467TO0M

📣 I'm excited to share our latest preprint! We adapt and characterise a neurosphere-based CNCC differentiation protocol, and demonstrate utility for quantitative phenotyping and craniofacial disease modelling! 🧫 Read about Array-CNCC here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @uoe-igc.bsky.social

Array-CNCC: precise aggregation and arrayed plating facilitate quantitative phenotyping of human cranial neural crest cells and craniofacial disease modelling https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.18.696654v1

Issue 12 is complete! Cover: Members of BiO's community, including a founding Editor, past & present Editors-in-Chief, our academic Editors and some of the reviewers from BiO's Fast & Fair peer review initiative. We would like to thank them all. bit.ly/4piig6y