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Noa Ottilie Borst

@ottilie.bsky.social

PhD w/ Justin Crocker at EMBL 👩‍🔬 | developmental genetics & regulatory evolution 🪰🧬

22 Posts153 Follower160 Folgt
Paco Majic@hhydrochaerus.bsky.social · 4w ago

What drives the variation in mutation rates between seals and walruses, gulls and pelicans? Maybe selection counteracting the burden of deleterious mutations- or maybe it is a spandrel, a neutral byproduct of the diversification of development and life-history academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

Mutation rate variation as the neutral byproduct of developmental and life history diversification

Abstract. Understanding why species differ in their rates of mutation is central to explaining patterns of molecular and phenotypic evolution. Mutation rat

academic.oup.com

Noa Ottilie Borst@ottilie.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Such an incredible couple of days! I'll be thinking about the ideas and discussions for a long time to come. Many thanks to the organisers and @biologists.bsky.social for putting together such a fantastic workshop 🌟

The Company of Biologists@biologists.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Thank you to organisers to James Hombría and Antónia Monteiro @monteirolab.bsky.social and everyone who joined us at this week's Workshop on 'Novelty, Co-option and Divergence During Gene Network Evolution' biologists.com/workshops #BiologistsWorkshops

Group photo of Workshop attendees
Rodrigo Senovilla-Ganzo@rodrisenovilla.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The GRN future shines bright in the evo-devo landscape! ☀️Being surrounded of these amazing scientists for a week has been a total pleasure, I will need a whole summer to process all the results, discussions and advice. Profoundly grateful to @biologists.bsky.social and organizers James and Antonia

The Company of Biologists@biologists.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Thank you to organisers to James Hombría and Antónia Monteiro @monteirolab.bsky.social and everyone who joined us at this week's Workshop on 'Novelty, Co-option and Divergence During Gene Network Evolution' biologists.com/workshops #BiologistsWorkshops

Group photo of Workshop attendees
Nature Reviews Genetics@natrevgenet.nature.com · 2mo ago

ICYMI: New online! Pleiotropic effects of cis-regulatory mutations

Pleiotropic effects of cis-regulatory mutations

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 28 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-00981-zIn this Comment, Patricia Wittkopp revisits assumptions that cis-regulatory mutations are weakly pleiotropic, ultimately calling for more data to assess the extent to which they are less pleiotropic and deleterious than trans-regulatory mutations.

dlvr.it

Noa Ottilie Borst@ottilie.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Now published in Current Opinion in Genetics & Development as part of the special issue on Genome Architecture and Expression. 🧬 Part 1: doi.org/10.1016/j.gd... Part 2: doi.org/10.1016/j.gd...

Redirecting

doi.org

Justin Crocker@justinmcrocker.bsky.social · 6mo ago

🧬✨ New 2-part review on the evolution of regulatory DNA (enhancers & promoters)! What started as conversations between Gasper Tkačik @istaresearch.bsky.social and our group @embl.org grew into a broader synthesis. Preprints here: Part 1: arxiv.org/abs/2601.19681 Part 2: arxiv.org/abs/2601.21480

EMBL DB unit@embldbunit.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🔥New work from the Crocker group @justinmcrocker.bsky.social @embl.org on the mechanistic and evolutionary basis of dominance from cis-regulatory variation in Drosophila Congratulations to Noa @ottilie.bsky.social and all the authors 🥳

Noa Ottilie Borst@ottilie.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Excited to share my first preprint from my PhD w/ @justinmcrocker.bsky.social. We show that cell type-specific regulatory dominance promotes robustness and evolutionary innovation through interallelic transcriptional hubs, potentially expanding the mutational paths available to diploids. (1/18)

Justin Crocker@justinmcrocker.bsky.social · 5mo ago

New Preprint! When one enhancer allele changes another's regulatory output, is that bad? We found it could be a feature — interallelic cis-regulatory dominance buffers outputs AND enables evolutionary innovation. Two for one! Led by @ottilie.bsky.social from @embl.org doi: doi.org/10.64898/202...

Interallelic cis-regulatory dominance promotes robustness and evolutionary innovation

Dominance is a central principle of genetics, yet the mechanistic basis and the evolutionary consequences of dominance arising from cis-regulatory variation remain poorly understood. We examined the evolutionary trajectories of a pleiotropic developmental enhancer in Drosophila . A genotype–phenotype map between D. melanogaster and D. simulans enhancer sequences reveals extensive epistasis, and many homozygous evolutionary paths reduce transcriptional output. In heterozygotes, however, regulatory dominance masks variants that reduce gene expression, potentially relaxing evolutionary constraints. Using allele-specific reporters and imaging, we show that this dominance arises from interallelic interactions (also known as transvection) reinforced by transcriptional hubs. Importantly, this enhancer dominance is cell-type specific, raising the possibility that it conceals deleterious effects in essential tissues while revealing novel, ectopic activity in others. Interallelic regulatory hubs may therefore expand the range of mutational paths available to diploid genomes while preserving essential transcriptional output. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

doi.org

Noa Ottilie Borst@ottilie.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Excited to share my first preprint from my PhD w/ @justinmcrocker.bsky.social. We show that cell type-specific regulatory dominance promotes robustness and evolutionary innovation through interallelic transcriptional hubs, potentially expanding the mutational paths available to diploids. (1/18)

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology@biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Interallelic cis-regulatory dominance promotes robustness and evolutionary innovation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.17.712157v1

Justin Crocker@justinmcrocker.bsky.social · 6mo ago

🧬✨ New 2-part review on the evolution of regulatory DNA (enhancers & promoters)! What started as conversations between Gasper Tkačik @istaresearch.bsky.social and our group @embl.org grew into a broader synthesis. Preprints here: Part 1: arxiv.org/abs/2601.19681 Part 2: arxiv.org/abs/2601.21480

Long-term evolution of regulatory DNA sequences. Part 1: Simulations on global, biophysically-realistic genotype-phenotype maps

Promoters and enhancers are cis-regulatory elements (CREs), DNA sequences that bind transcription factor (TF) proteins to up- or down-regulate target genes. Decades-long efforts yielded TF-DNA interac...

arxiv.org

Lucas Waltzer @lucaswaltzer.bsky.social · last yr.

#drosophila @flybase.bsky.social request emergency funding: "As it stands, by the end of July, 2025, there will be no future updates to FlyBase, and in the worst case scenario access to the website will also be lost" => please donate! www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

Drosophila Genetic Database

The Drosophila Genetic Database, FlyBase, is on the brink of collapse due to the sudden termination of the FlyBase NIH grant, which includes salaries for 5 literature curators based at the University ...

philanthropy.cam.ac.uk