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Reposted by María Mariner

Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics @molgen.mpg.de · 12d

2nd Meeting on Early Embryogenesis and Epigenetics
16 - 18 Feb 2026 at MPI for Molecular Genetics, Berlin
with support by the Weizmann Institute for Science.
Early bird registration until 30 Sep - register now👇
www.molgen.mpg.de/embryo2026

Save-the-date information:
New approaches to Early embryogenesis & epigenetics
February 16 - 18 2026
Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Berlin, Germany

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Reposted by María Mariner

Pedro Rocha @pedroprocha.bsky.social · Sep 8

🚨🚨🚨 Please repost
We are looking for postdocs to join our lab at NIH.
Apply:
www.nichd.nih.gov/research/atNICHD/Investigators/rocha/apply
Learn more about training at NIH :
www.training.nih.gov/research-tra...

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Reposted by María Mariner

Society for Developmental Biology @socdevbio.bsky.social · Sep 2

Axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum)🦎 can regrow limbs, tail, spinal cord, heart, and even parts of its brain. Axolotls are champions of regeneration and also shed light on limb patterning, wound healing, and developmental plasticity. Image from Prayag Murawala #ModelMonday #DevBio

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Sep 2

Honoured to be part of this awesome lineup 😍! @fnucleosome.bsky.social thanks for the opportunity! A very exciting Fall Season is about to start, I wouldn't miss it 😌🧬

FragileNucleosome @fnucleosome.bsky.social · Sep 1

We're super excited to announce the entire lineup for the Fall season of Fragile Nucleosome Seminars, starting on Sept 10th at 1200 EDT / 1600 UTC with @gracebower.bsky.social and @creminslab.bsky.social!

register here for the entire series: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Fragile Nucleosome Fall Seminars:
September 10 Grace Bower, Kvon Lab @ UC Irvine, USA
Jennifer Phillips-Cremins, UPenn, USA

September 24 Ali Wilkening, Sanulli Lab @ Stanford, USA
Juanma Schvartzman, Columbia University, USA

October 8 Sanim Rahman, Greenberg Lab @ UPenn, USA
Alex Federation, Talus Bio, USA

October 22 Alice Laigle, Croll Lab @ University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Seungsoo Kim, UC Irvine, USA

November 5 Hannah Long, University of Edinburgh, UK
Jeff Vierstra, Altius Institute, USA

November 19 Ishtiaque Hossain, Pastor Lab @ McGill, Canada
Sarah Teichmann, University of Cambridge, UK

December 3 María Mariner Faulí, Rada Iglesias Lab @ IBBTEC, Spain
Jonathan Henninger, Carnegie Mellon, USA

December 17 Rebecca Berrens, Oxford University, UK
Jean-Benoit Lalanne, University of Montreal, Canada

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Reposted by María Mariner

Karin Prummel @kprummel.bsky.social · Sep 1

We are searching for a research technician in our group at EMBL Heidelberg! 🧫🧬🔬

For more details, see the ad. Please reach out in case of any questions.

The position is ideally filled by October 1.

embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

Research Technician

We are looking for a highly motivated research technician to join the Zaugg group at EMBL Heidelberg, an interdisciplinary team of experimental and computational scientists. Our research combines larg...

embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com

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Reposted by María Mariner

Rada-Iglesias Lab @radaiglesiaslab.bsky.social · Aug 13

#Preprint alert! 📣

We are thrilled to share the work led by Lara Zorro-Shahidian and Lucio di Filippo, in which we show that #MLL2 controls gene expression in both #ESC and upon #differentiation by facilitating the #enhancer like activity of #LINE1 elements

www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

MLL2 facilitates long-range gene regulation through LINE1 elements

Transcriptional regulation is tightly linked to chromatin organization, with H3K4me3 commonly marking both active and bivalent promoters. In embryonic stem cells (ESC), MLL2 is essential for H3K4me3 d...

www.biorxiv.org

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Aug 11

🗒️‼️Do not miss this exciting new #preprint from the @radaiglesiaslab.bsky.social, led by @eharo84.bsky.social: a master of building synergy ⏫- both in #enhancer research and at the lab! #DarkGenome #Transcription #GeneRegulation #Development #Genomics

Rada-Iglesias Lab @radaiglesiaslab.bsky.social · Aug 11

Excited to share the latest work from the lab led by @eharo84.bsky.social, in which we have used synthetic biology to explore the mechanisms by which different types of long-range enhancers ensure robust and precise developmental gene expression

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Synthetic engineering demonstrates that synergy among enhancers involves an increase in transcriptionally productive enhancer-gene contacts

Enhancers are non-coding cis-regulatory elements that control the expression of distally located genes in a tissue- and time-specific manner. Recent studies indicate that enhancers can differ in their...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by María Mariner

Centro Andaluz de Biología del Desarrollo @cabd-upo-csic.bsky.social · Jul 24

#JobOffer
#cienciajobs

Postdoctoral position at the #CABD working with the amazing and dynamic team of @crisprscan.bsky.social ✂️🧬🐟

📍Sevilla, Spain

Apply or share

@sebioldev.bsky.social @segenetica.bsky.social @sebbm.bsky.social

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Jul 24

Thanks also to Judith Zaugg (Sara Lobato and @kprummel.bsky.social) and Kyung-Min Noh ( @mattetrovato.bsky.social)‬ labs at @embl.org Heidelberg for hosting me during an awesome internship which brought some of the most exciting data!

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Jul 24

📕Read the full preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Special thanks to my great PI and to the @radaiglesiaslab.bsky.social members at IBBTEC, specially to @sanchezgaya.bsky.social, whose work on the bioinformatics part of the project has been truly instrumental 💻📊📉⚡

Dual role of ZIC2 during neural induction: from pioneer transcription factor to enhancer activator

ZIC2, a member of the Zinc Finger of the Cerebellum family of transcription factors (TFs), plays crucial roles during neural development. In humans, defects in ZIC2 cause holoprosencephaly, a congenit...

www.biorxiv.org

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Jul 24

By combining the ZIC2 degron, scMultiome and additional genomic data we stringently defined the ZIC2-dependent Gene Regulatory Network (GRN) during neural induction. We showed that the genes part of this GRN are particularly sensitive to ZIC2 dosage and, thus, might be implicated in HPE etiology.

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Jul 24

ZIC2 acts as a temporal switchboard:
🧬It pioneers enhancers by opening chromatin
🔛Then activates them at just the right time
All to shape an anterior dorsal neural identity 🧠!

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Jul 24

🤨Are we sure? What happens without ZIC2?
Brain patterning genes don’t turn on properly
➡️WNT signaling drops
➡️Neural progenitors skew toward more ventral fates
➡️Some even begin differentiating into neurons too early

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Jul 24

🎭Act II: The Activator
Later, at day 5-6 (neural induction), ZIC2 flips the switch:
It activates a proportion of the enhancers it primed earlier.
This triggers expression of dorsal and midbrain fate genes, giving neural progenitors their regional identity. 🧠

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Jul 24

ZIC2 doesn’t act randomly — it targets enhancers linked to patterning genes like:
➡️En1, Lmx1a/b, Pax2: playing crucial roles in midbrain and roof plate development.
➡️Wnt1, Wnt3a: core components of the WNT signaling pathway.

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Jul 24

🎭 Act I: The Pioneer
At day 3 of differentiation (primed pluripotency), ZIC2 binds previously closed chromatin regions.
It opens them up — broadly “priming” putative regulatory elements, some linked to key neurodevelopmental genes.
📖A textbook case of pioneer transcription factor behavior.

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Jul 24

But things change as mESC begin to differentiate into neural progenitors.
📉ZIC3 levels go down, and ZIC2 takes over📈
Now is when ZIC2’s real job begins — and it’s a two-act performance ✌️

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Jul 24

The answer: ZIC3 steps in 💥
It is the most highly expressed ZIC family member in mESCs, and it adopts the starring role.
When we delete Zic3, pluripotency falls apart.
🧫 ZIC3 = the real main character (at this stage).

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Jul 24

🔎This story starts with a mystery:
ZIC2 binds thousands of enhancers and promoters in pluripotent stem cells…
but when we knock it out, nothing happens. 🤷‍♀️
Cells look fine, gene expression is stable — no chaos.
🤯Why⁉️

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Jul 24

To tackle this, we combined:
🧬CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing — to generate Zic2⁻/⁻, Zic2⁺/⁻, Zic2-FLAG-HA, and ZIC2-degron mESC lines.
📊Bulk (RNA-seq, ATAC-seq, ChIP-seq) and single-cell (Multiome RNA + ATAC) profiling — at key stages of neural differentiation.
Now, let the plot unfold...

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Jul 24

🗨️Let me set the stage🎭: ZIC2 is essential for brain development 🧠
Mutations in ZIC2 cause holoprosencephaly (HPE), one of the most common congenital brain malformations, where the brain fails to split into two hemispheres.
But what does ZIC2 actually do at the molecular level?🕵️

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Jul 24

Thrilled to share the story stemming from my PhD!
We used mESC neural differentiation, genome editing and bulk & single-cell approaches to uncover how ZIC2 controls early neural fate by playing a dual and sequential regulatory role as a promiscous pioneer and a selective lineage-specific activator.

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Reposted by María Mariner

Aydan Bulut-Karslioglu @bulutkarslioglu.bsky.social · Jun 23

⚠️ 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.

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María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · Jun 24

Just visited the pond where my passion for developmental biology began🥹. No tadpoles in sight, but I did spot these handsome little guys. Counted over 30 frogs 🐸—most of them covered in moist soil, undergoing estivation!🥵🌄

María Mariner @mariamafau.bsky.social · May 31

CAR-T therapy dev is on fire! Still remember covering the ARI project (Clínic Bcn-IDIBAPS) as an assignment during my Biotech days at UPV—I am sure Ariana would be smiling, excited to see how fast the field is moving to make the treatment she dreamt of simpler and more accessible.🧡

Nature @nature.com · May 31

Manufacturing CAR T cells in the laboratory is expensive and time-consuming.

An in vivo approach could get this powerful therapy to more people
https://go.nature.com/45w5A5w

Cancer-fighting immune cells could soon be engineered inside our bodies

Nature - Manufacturing CAR T cells in the laboratory is expensive and time-consuming. An in vivo approach could get the powerful therapy to more people.

go.nature.com