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Reposted by Navin B. Ramakrishna

Wellcome Sanger Institute @sangerinstitute.bsky.social · 5h

Read ‘Sperm sequencing reveals extensive positive selection in the male germline’ from @sangerinstitute.bsky.social and collaborators in @nature.com below:

nature.com/articles/s41...

Sperm sequencing reveals extensive positive selection in the male germline - Nature

A combination of whole-genome NanoSeq with deep whole-exome and targeted NanoSeq is used to accurately characterize mutation rates and genes under positive selection in sperm cells.

nature.com

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Reposted by Navin B. Ramakrishna

Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge @gurdoninstitute.bsky.social · 7h

It is with great sadness that we share the news of the death of our founder, colleague, mentor and friend, Professor Sir John Gurdon. His vision and dedication will continue to inspire generations of scientists.
🔗 www.gurdon.cam.ac.uk/nobel-laurea...

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Navin B. Ramakrishna @navinbr.bsky.social · 1d

Sad to hear this. John was a brilliant scientist and also someone who engaged with everyone personally & as equals, especially young scientists and students. www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

Nobel Laureate Professor Sir John Gurdon dies aged 92

It is with great sadness that the University shares the news of the death of Professor Sir John Gurdon, founder of the Gurdon Institute.

www.cam.ac.uk

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Reposted by Navin B. Ramakrishna

Seema Grewal @seemagrewal.bsky.social · 1d

So sad to hear the news - John truly was an inspiration to so many, and one of a kind.

www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

Nobel Laureate Professor Sir John Gurdon dies aged 92

It is with great sadness that the University shares the news of the death of Professor Sir John Gurdon, founder of the Gurdon Institute.

www.cam.ac.uk

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Navin B. Ramakrishna @navinbr.bsky.social · 5d

Very candid responses from Azim Surani here on his initially turbulent scientific journey, & accounts of genomic imprinting and the pioneering of mammalian scRNA-seq. Great to see this put together by Ashley Moffett & @geraldinejowett.bsky.social journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

An interview with Azim Surani

Professor Azim Surani is the Director of Epigenomics and Germline Imprinting at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, UK. He is this year's recipient of both the prestigious Kyoto Prize and the Paul Ehrl...

journals.biologists.com

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Reposted by Navin B. Ramakrishna

Raquel Fueyo @fueyoraquel.bsky.social · 7d

Today in @nature.com, we present our work leveraging functional genomics and human blastoids to uncover a human-specific mechanism in preimplantation development driven by the endogenous retrovirus HERVK.
Special thanks to the reviewers whose comments improved our manuscript a lot! rdcu.be/eI3tD

A human-specific regulatory mechanism revealed in a pre-implantation model

Nature - Genetic manipulation of blastoids reveals the role of recently emerged transposable elements and genes in human development.

rdcu.be

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Reposted by Navin B. Ramakrishna

Vincent Pasque @pasquelab.bsky.social · 7d

Excited to share our latest News & Views published in Nature! @nature.com
rdcu.be/eI2NJ

Sherif Khodeer and I discuss how stem cell-based embryo models provide evidence that viral DNA sequences that entered the human genome in the past were repurposed to aid early stages of embryonic development.

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Reposted by Navin B. Ramakrishna

Michael Le Page @mjflepage.bsky.social · 8d

I do think this human egg story is being massively overhyped. To be clear, no eggs have been "generated", "created" or "made" from human skin cells - rather, existing human eggs have been given the DNA from skin cells using a kind of cloning 1/

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The EMBO Journal @embojournal.org · 9d

Embryonic signatures of intergenerational epigenetic inheritance across paternal environment & genetic background
@jamiehackett.bsky.social et al @embl.org see transcriptome changes in offspring after fertilisation by fathers exposed to gut dysbiosis or western diet
www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

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Nobu Hamazaki @nobuhamazaki.bsky.social · 12d

New paper from my lab and @jshendure.bsky.social lab! Led by the brilliant @zukailiu.bsky.social and @cxqiu.bsky.social. We tackled how anterior and posterior progenitor cells cooperate to self-organize into an embryonic structure (termed AP-gastruloid). (1/n) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Development @dev-journal.bsky.social · 12d

In vitro fertilisation (IVF) pioneer Bob Edwards was born 100 years ago today. Learn more about how his legacy has contributed to both assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and developmental biology in this Primer by Martin Johnson

doi.org/10.1242/dev....

A schematic summary of the IVF procedure.

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Eric Miska Lab @miskalab.bsky.social · 16d

This year @ericmiska.bsky.social lab celebrates 20 years of science! 🥳We marked the occasion with a wonderful gathering of past and present members, sharing memories, discoveries, and friendships. Here’s to the next 20 years of breakthroughs and collaboration🥂 @cambiochem.bsky.social

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Reposted by Navin B. Ramakrishna

Marco Trizzino @marcotrizzino.bsky.social · 16d

Our study on the role of LTR5HS and SVAs in regulation of human neural crest migration is now published as peer-reviewed paper on @molsystbiol.org!
Congrats to first author brilliant postdoc Laura Deelen, and all the authors involved! @imperialsci.bsky.social
www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

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Reposted by Navin B. Ramakrishna

mathiaseder.bsky.social @mathiaseder.bsky.social · 19d

✨Exciting news: the main story of my PhD is out in Science!

Together with Christine Moene @cmoene.bsky.social, we explored what happens when you scramble the genome—revealing how Sox2’s position shapes enhancer activation.

📖 Read the full story here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Functional maps of a genomic locus reveal confinement of an enhancer by its target gene

Genes are often activated by enhancers located at large genomic distances, and the importance of this positioning is poorly understood. By relocating promoter-reporter constructs into thousands of alt...

www.science.org

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Reposted by Navin B. Ramakrishna

Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge @gurdoninstitute.bsky.social · 20d

Thrilled to share that our Group Leader Prof. Azim Surani, together with Prof. Davor Solter, has been awarded the 2026 Paul Ehrlich & Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize 🎉 for discovering genomic imprinting—a breakthrough that reshaped genetics and launched modern epigenetics.

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Navin B. Ramakrishna @navinbr.bsky.social · 18d

Sad to miss it - but hope it was an excellent one!

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Reposted by Navin B. Ramakrishna

Alexis Verger 🧬🧫🧪 @alexis-verger.cpesr.fr · 19d

Functional maps of a genomic locus reveal confinement of an enhancer by its target gene by the @basvansteensellab.bsky.social

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Functional maps of a genomic locus reveal confinement of an enhancer by its target gene

Genes are often activated by enhancers located at large genomic distances, and the importance of this positioning is poorly understood. By relocating promoter-reporter constructs into thousands of alt...

www.science.org

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Reposted by Navin B. Ramakrishna

Julius Brennecke @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social · 21d

PIWI clade Argonautes are essential for transposon silencing. Without them, animals are sterile due to massive transposon activity.

But how does piRNA-guided target interaction translate into silencing?

PhD student Júlia Portell Montserrat has an intriguing answer

www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

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Navin B. Ramakrishna @navinbr.bsky.social · 22d

Clearly a hot topic - 2 timely review articles on human primordial germ cell specification in the span of 5 days! In
@biologists.bsky.social (Development) doi.org/10.1242/dev...., & @natrevmcb.nature.com below:

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Navin B. Ramakrishna @navinbr.bsky.social · 22d

Great to see this commentatry on the need for systematic single-cell mapping of cis-regualtory elements: from Yi Xiang, Tim Stuart and Jay Shin @astar-gis.bsky.social @jayshin.bsky.social

Nature Reviews Genetics @natrevgenet.nature.com · 22d

New online! Cis-regulatory elements at cellular resolution

Cis-regulatory elements at cellular resolution

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 16 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41576-025-00882-7In this Comment, the authors outline some key next steps to advance our understanding of cis-regulatory elements at single-cell resolution, which includes harmonizing global efforts to construct a comprehensive single-cell atlas of gene regulation.

www.nature.com

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Navin B. Ramakrishna @navinbr.bsky.social · 22d

Illustrator on our side! (For me, I’m lucky to still have institutional access and not had to pivot yet).

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Navin B. Ramakrishna @navinbr.bsky.social · 23d

Schematics of our increasing knowledge of in vivo human primordial germ cell development, and a summary of the exciting hPGCLC maturation protocols:
@dev-journal.bsky.social @biologists.bsky.social

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Reposted by Navin B. Ramakrishna

Sally Lowell @cellysally.bsky.social · 24d

Austin Smith points out that naive pluripotent cells in the embryo only self- renew rarely, if ever.

In response to some heckling from the faculty, he says “You can call ES cells artifacts if you want, but they’re still bloody marvellous” 😃

#SCSS2025

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Reposted by Navin B. Ramakrishna

Derek Severi Lundberg @derekseveri.bsky.social · 25d

record 17,058 Marie Curie proposals in 2025 vs. 10,360 in 2024!!! the reason is pretty obvious, but wow that is a huge jump marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/news/msca-po...

MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025 receives record number of 17,058 proposals

This year’s annual MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships call has attracted considerable interest from the research community with 17,058 proposals submitted.

marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu

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Navin B. Ramakrishna @navinbr.bsky.social · 26d

Together with Wolfram Gruhn and João Pedro Alves-Lopes, we’re extremely grateful to @dev-journal.bsky.social @biologists.bsky.social for the opportunity. It was a pleasure to re-connect and co-write with Surani lab alumni, commemorating a decade since the first hPGCLC protocols were published.