Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Stefan Schoenfelder @stefanschoenfelder.bsky.social · 5h

Fantastic opportunity to work with the superb Howard and Klose labs on modelling Polycomb dynamics!

Emilia Dimitrova @edimitrova.bsky.social · 1d

If you are a computational biologist interested in how chromatin states are established and maintained to regulate transcription, this is the dream job for you! This will be in close collaboration with the Klose lab in Oxford and we have a lot of cool projects you can get involved in. Apply!

John Innes Centre @johninnescentre.bsky.social · 1d

VACANCY - We have an opportunity for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the Howard Group, working to develop computational models of epigenetic dynamics in the Polycomb system.

www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/po...

Closing date - 9 November 2025
Salary - £37,500 - £45,350
Contract - 36 months, full-time

1

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

Ander Movilla @andermovilla.bsky.social · 1d

Very exciting opportunity for those with a quantitative background and interested in epigenetics / gene regulation. Highly collaborative environment!

John Innes Centre @johninnescentre.bsky.social · 1d

VACANCY - We have an opportunity for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the Howard Group, working to develop computational models of epigenetic dynamics in the Polycomb system.

www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/po...

Closing date - 9 November 2025
Salary - £37,500 - £45,350
Contract - 36 months, full-time

Postdoctoral Researcher (Howard Group) | John Innes Centre

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the Howard Group at the John Innes Centre, working on cutting-edge science in the field of Computational and Systems Biology.

www.jic.ac.uk

8 8

Stefan Schoenfelder @stefanschoenfelder.bsky.social · 5h

Next year! 😉

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

James Briscoe @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social · 23h

Very sad news, John Gurdon has died.

A developmental biologist's developmental biologist, Nobel prize winner

His work is the foundation of much of today's dev & stem cell bio.

An inspiration to many, including me. Always asking questions & wanting the answers

www.magd.cam.ac.uk/news/profess...

Professor Sir John Gurdon FRS (1933-2025) | Magdalene College

Magdalene College is deeply saddened to announce the death of Professor Sir John Gurdon FRS, who served as Master of the College from 1995 to 2002.

www.magd.cam.ac.uk

7 100 180

Stefan Schoenfelder @stefanschoenfelder.bsky.social · 1d

Balasubramanian, Klenerman and Mayer for NGS would be the perfect compromise 😉 And highly deserving!

1 1

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

Edda Schulz @eddaschulz.bsky.social · 2d

⚠️ Paper alert: Using a novel CRISPR screening approach, we mapped the entire regulatory network controlling Xist—key for X-chromosome inactivation.
👉 We discover how sex and development signals are decoded at a single gene locus.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
👇 Bluetorial

Reporter CRISPR screens decipher cis-regulatory and trans-regulatory principles at the Xist locus - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology

Here Schwämmle et al. develop CRISPR reporter screens to map transcription-factor-regulatory element interactions at the Xist locus, revealing a two-step mechanism integrating developmental and X-dosage signals to initiate X-chromosome inactivation.

www.nature.com

3 50 100

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

Raquel Fueyo @fueyoraquel.bsky.social · 2d

⚡⚡Excited to announce I'll be starting my lab at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Genetics (@molgen.mpg.de) in Berlin in December! Leaving sunny California to join a fantastic environment with colleagues who do super cool work.
🔬🦠I'm hiring at all levels! 🔬🦠Check: www.molgen.mpg.de/fueyo-lab

3 22 75

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

John Innes Centre @johninnescentre.bsky.social · 1d

VACANCY - We have an opportunity for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the Howard Group, working to develop computational models of epigenetic dynamics in the Polycomb system.

www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/po...

Closing date - 9 November 2025
Salary - £37,500 - £45,350
Contract - 36 months, full-time

Postdoctoral Researcher (Howard Group) | John Innes Centre

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the Howard Group at the John Innes Centre, working on cutting-edge science in the field of Computational and Systems Biology.

www.jic.ac.uk

9 6

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

Adrian Liston @labliston.bsky.social · 2d

A small primer on the #NobelPrize awarded to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi today. This prize was for combining two separate fields of immunology research - genetic research on IPEX and immunology research of regulatory T cells (#Tregs), with enormous impact on biology/medicine

2 72 150

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

Julius Brennecke @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social · 3d

The Vienna BioCenter PhD Program application deadline is approaching: October 10!

Join one of Europe’s premier life science campuses, home to cutting-edge research across all areas of biology.
Apply and start your scientific journey in Vienna!

training.vbc.ac.at/phd-program/

#PhD #LifeSciences

22 30

Stefan Schoenfelder @stefanschoenfelder.bsky.social · 3d

This paper uncovers that HERVK LTR5Hs, a hominoid-specific retrovirus, act as epiblast enhancers with a crucial function in human pre-implantation development - stunning!
doi.org/10.1038/s415...

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.

doi.org

8 23

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

Lucas Farnung @lucas.farnunglab.com · 3d

We have added additional functionalities including a collapsible protein pane and zoom scrolling. domaindesigner.farnunglab.com

Lucas Farnung @lucas.farnunglab.com · 9d

New week, new tool: Find our Protein Domain Designer tool to generate publication-ready protein domain diagrams here: domaindesigner.farnunglab.com

Protein Domain Designer tool for the generation of publication-ready protein domain diagrams

1 6 18

Stefan Schoenfelder @stefanschoenfelder.bsky.social · 3d

Thanks a lot Raquel - that makes perfect sense.

1

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

Mikhail Spivakov @mspivakov.bsky.social · 5d

Many enhancers that drive tissue-specific gene expression are already connected to gene promoters in human pluripotent cells.

In a new preprint, we share some clues about when, how, and why this happens!

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

Poising and connectivity of emergent human developmental enhancers in the transition from naive to primed pluripotency

In primed human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) resembling post-implantation epiblast, numerous lineage-specific enhancers assume the poised chromatin state, co-marked by H3K4me1 and Polycomb-associate...

www.biorxiv.org

1 20 55

Stefan Schoenfelder @stefanschoenfelder.bsky.social · 5d

I can imagine! Congrats again to you and the whole team on this beautiful piece of work. Can I ask a technical question please: why did you choose a cumate-inducible dCas9-KRAB instead of for example Dox inducible?

1 1

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

Camille Moore @camille-moore.bsky.social · 5d

Today I am so pleased to present our work on how chromatin remodelers affect mesoscale chromatin organization.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

ATP-dependent remodeling of chromatin condensates reveals distinct mesoscale outcomes

Adenosine triphosphate (ATP)–dependent chromatin remodeling enzymes mobilize nucleosomes, but how such mobilization affects chromatin condensation is unclear. We investigate effects of two major remod...

www.science.org

4 34 84

Stefan Schoenfelder @stefanschoenfelder.bsky.social · 5d

I first heard of this story when Joanna Wysocka presented it at the excellent @embo.org workshop on 'Enhancer Mechanics and Enhanceropathies' in Denmark earlier this year, and I was completely blown away. Truly beautiful work!

Raquel Fueyo @fueyoraquel.bsky.social · 6d

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

1 7

Stefan Schoenfelder @stefanschoenfelder.bsky.social · 6d

Very much looking forward to @axelvisel.bsky.social's talk "From Nucleotide to Megabase Scale: Enhancer Function in Development and Disease" in our @enhancedgenomics.bsky.social seminar series "The 3D Regulatory Genome"

📅 02 October 2025 (today!)
⏰ 4 pm GMT

Join:
us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

1 1

Stefan Schoenfelder @stefanschoenfelder.bsky.social · 6d

I think understanding how widespread they are in the human genome. We have some hints from cancer cell STARR-seq data that they are not pluripotent stem cell specific (see Figure 6 in our preprint), but we don't know which developmental contexts these non-canonical enhancers may play a role in.

1 1

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

Raquel Fueyo @fueyoraquel.bsky.social · 6d

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

10 46 120

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

Sara Wickstrom @sarawickstrom.bsky.social · 8d

How do #stemcells integrate information to coordinate fate decisions? Delighted to finally see our work showing how growth factors regulate the mechano-osmotic state of the #nucleus and #chromatin to control #pluripotency exit out! www.nature.com/articles/s41... see 🧵 👇

Mechano-osmotic signals control chromatin state and fate transitions in pluripotent stem cells - Nature Cell Biology

McCreery, Stubb et al. show that mechano-osmotic changes in the nucleus induce general transcriptional repression and prime chromatin for cell fate transitions by relieving repression of specific differentiation genes.

www.nature.com

10 74 170

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

Effie Apostolou lab @efapostolou29.bsky.social · 8d

👇👇👇

Dafne Campigli Di Giammartino @dafnecdg.bsky.social · 9d

🚨For chromatin, epigenetics and non-coding RNA lovers: only two more weeks left to apply!

Check out our lab page and if interested don't hesitate to apply 3d-chrom.iit.it

Research Technician
app.ncoreplat.com/jobposition/...

Senior Researcher-Technologist
app.ncoreplat.com/jobposition/...

2 1

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

Cédric Maurange @cedricmaurange.bsky.social · Apr 30

New lab paper out! 😀

We describe a new benchtop technique to isolate microRNAs from various cell types in a complex tissue (like the developing CNS). This is a fruitful collab with the Cremer lab from @ibdm.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosgenetics... 1/n 🧵

In vivo AGO-APP identifies a module of microRNAs cooperatively preserving neural progenitors

Author summary MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small RNAs that silence messenger RNAs (mRNAs) by binding to partially complementary sequences. They play a crucial role in cell type specification during develop...

journals.plos.org

3 15 36

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

Teresa Rayon @trayon.bsky.social · 10d

If you’re interested in this topic, please also check out @ebisuyamiki.bsky.social ky.social’s preprint.www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...v2

Systematic differences in protein stability underlie species-specific developmental tempo

Human embryonic development proceeds more slowly than in mice. The segmentation clock offers a tractable model to study interspecies differences in developmental tempo, as its oscillation period in hu...

www.biorxiv.org

1 6

Reposted by Stefan Schoenfelder

Teresa Rayon @trayon.bsky.social · 10d

Collectively, we report species-specific differences in protein production and degradation rates and provide *in vivo evidence* that degradative machineries are less active in human embryos than in mice. Finally, we establish a causal role for protein degradation on dev. tempo.

👇👇

Protein degradation shapes developmental tempo in mouse and human neural progenitors

The pace of embryonic development differs markedly across mammalian species, yet the molecular mechanisms underlying these tempo differences remain largely unknown. Here, we systematically compared pr...

www.biorxiv.org

1 4 7