Stein Aerts
@steinaerts.bsky.social
2.8K followers 640 following 33 posts
Computational biologist interested in deciphering the genomic regulatory code at vib.ai
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Reposted by Stein Aerts
jmschreiber91.bsky.social
Now that I'm settled in at @umasschan.bsky.social, I'm hiring at all levels: grad students, post-docs, and software engineers/bioinformaticians!

The goal of my lab is to understand the regulatory role of every nucleotide in our genomes and how this changes across every cell in our bodies.
steinaerts.bsky.social
The Biodiversity Cell Atlas white paper is out! A bold vision to map the diversity and evolution of cell types across the tree of life 🌍
arnausebe.bsky.social
Happy to share the Biodiversity Cell Atlas white paper, out today in @nature.com. We look at the possibilities, challenges, and potential impacts of molecularly mapping cells across the tree of life.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
steinaerts.bsky.social
We have two open positions for a ML and a LLM engineer to launch a machine learning expertise unit in our center @vibai.bsky.social, see vib.ai/en/opportuni...
vib.ai
Reposted by Stein Aerts
vibai.bsky.social
We're growing the VIB.AI Machine Learning Unit, and we're hiring!

📌 Head of the Machine Learning Unit
📌 LLM Engineer

Both roles are based in Leuven, Belgium, at the heart of a thriving research ecosystem.
https://vib.ai/en/opportunities#/job-list
Apply by October 31st.
Reposted by Stein Aerts
jengreitz.bsky.social
Excited for a major milestone in our efforts to map enhancers and interpret variants in the human genome:

The E2G Portal! e2g.stanford.edu

This collates our predictions of enhancer-gene regulatory interactions across >1,600 cell types and tissues.

Uses cases 👇

1/
Reposted by Stein Aerts
anshulkundaje.bsky.social
New faculty position opening at @stanford-chemh.bsky.social . Especially interested in candidates with deep expertise and vision for the future of AI/ML/computational models of biomolecules. Please RT
pollyfordyce.bsky.social
Please apply to our tenure-track faculty position at
@stanford-chemh.bsky.social! We are searching for a new colleague working at the interface between computation and molecular sciences. See post below and pls forward widely!
chemh.stanford.edu/opportunitie...
Faculty Recruitment
chemh.stanford.edu
Reposted by Stein Aerts
arnausebe.bsky.social
Registration deadline for @embo.org workshop EvoChromo extended until September 30.

meetings.embo.org/event/24-evo...
steinaerts.bsky.social
@niklaskemp.bsky.social will present our new CREsted framework at the next scverse community meeting!

CREsted allows you to train sequence-to-function models tailored to cell type-specific enhancers (including synthetic enhancer design) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... github.com/aertslab/cre...
scverse.bsky.social
We will have our next community meeting on Tuesday, 2025-09-16 at 18:00 CEST! Niklas Kempynck will be presenting on CREsted, a package for training enhancer models on scATAC-seq data.
(Zoom registration link and more information in thread!)
🧵
Reposted by Stein Aerts
alexanrna.bsky.social
1/ First preprint from @jdemeul.bsky.social lab 🥳! We present our new multi-modal single-cell long-read method SPLONGGET (Single-cell Profiling of LONG-read Genome, Epigenome, and Transcriptome)! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
ikea-style logo of splongget
Reposted by Stein Aerts
wkhuber.bsky.social
Join EMBL as a research group leader in AI in biology. EMBL AI is our new initiative aiming to exploit the full potential of ML/AI-based approaches to advance our understanding of the most complex system in the known universe - life on Earth.
embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...
(1/3)
Reposted by Stein Aerts
paveltomancak.bsky.social
We are all super happy and proud to see our work on the function and evolution of the #cephalic #furrow published in @nature.com. Let me say a few things about the background and history of this work on the #Evolution_of_Morphogenesis (1/12)
Reposted by Stein Aerts
jmschreiber91.bsky.social
In the genomics community, we have focused pretty heavily on achieving state-of-the-art predictive performance.

While undoubtedly important, how we *use* these models after training is potentially even more important.

tangermeme v1.0.0 is out now. Hope you find it useful!
Reposted by Stein Aerts
jefferis.bsky.social
Neuronal diversity is written in transcriptional codes 🧬. But what is the logic of these codes that define cell types and wiring patterns?
To find out we built a #scRNAseq developmental atlas of the Drosophila nerve cord and linked it to the #connectome 🪰🧠
#preprint thread ⬇️1/8
ALT text: A UMAP representation of a single cell RNAseq dataset from the Drosophila ventral nerve cord as well as images of the Drosophila nerve cord connectome and different stages of fly development.
Reposted by Stein Aerts
sten.linnarsson.org
A major KI initiative to recruit new assistant professors with outstanding proposals in all areas of medicine, biomedicine and public health. We offer an amazing research environment, great colleagues and generous startup packages. Check it out and get working on your applications! (repost please!)
ki.se
Applications are now open! We are recruiting 20 Assistant Professors in a wide range of subject areas. We're looking for early-career researchers with strong scientific merits and future potential.
🔗 All positions: ki.se/en/about-ki/...
Reposted by Stein Aerts
anshulkundaje.bsky.social
@jengreitz.bsky.social l & my lab want to co-hire a computational biologist/biostatistician with project management expertise to help map the regulatory code of the human genome and discover genetic mechanisms of disease.

Details below
careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/computa...

Plz RT
Reposted by Stein Aerts
bartdeplancke.bsky.social
Outstanding Faculty opportunity in the broad area of 'life sciences engineering' @EPFL School of Life Sciences, open to both junior and senior researchers. We may prefer metabolism-centric applications but remain open to outstanding applications across domains:
www.epfl.ch/about/workin...
Faculty Position in Life Science Engineering
The School of Life Sciences at EPFL invites applications for a faculty position in life science engineering. Appointments will be at Tenure Track Assistant Professor or at Associate Professor level. W...
www.epfl.ch
Reposted by Stein Aerts
Reposted by Stein Aerts
carldeboer.bsky.social
SOOOO MANY GENOMICS MODELSSSS! 😱 Often unclear which is best since they benchmark differently! In this preprint, we introduce GAME, a new framework that utilizes APIs to enable sustainable, uniform model evaluation so we can see which is actually best for each task. doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Reposted by Stein Aerts
aelek.bsky.social
I am very happy to have posted my first bioRxiv preprint. A long time in the making - and still adding a few final touches to it - but we're excited to finally have it out there in the wild:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Read below for a few highlights...
Decoding cnidarian cell type gene regulation
Animal cell types are defined by differential access to genomic information, a process orchestrated by the combinatorial activity of transcription factors that bind to cis -regulatory elements (CREs) to control gene expression. However, the regulatory logic and specific gene networks that define cell identities remain poorly resolved across the animal tree of life. As early-branching metazoans, cnidarians can offer insights into the early evolution of cell type-specific genome regulation. Here, we profiled chromatin accessibility in 60,000 cells from whole adults and gastrula-stage embryos of the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis. We identified 112,728 CREs and quantified their activity across cell types, revealing pervasive combinatorial enhancer usage and distinct promoter architectures. To decode the underlying regulatory grammar, we trained sequence-based models predicting CRE accessibility and used these models to infer ontogenetic relationships among cell types. By integrating sequence motifs, transcription factor expression, and CRE accessibility, we systematically reconstructed the gene regulatory networks that define cnidarian cell types. Our results reveal the regulatory complexity underlying cell differentiation in a morphologically simple animal and highlight conserved principles in animal gene regulation. This work provides a foundation for comparative regulatory genomics to understand the evolutionary emergence of animal cell type diversity. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. European Research Council, https://ror.org/0472cxd90, ERC-StG 851647 Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, https://ror.org/05r0vyz12, PID2021-124757NB-I00, FPI Severo Ochoa PhD fellowship European Union, https://ror.org/019w4f821, Marie Skłodowska-Curie INTREPiD co-fund agreement 75442, Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement 101031767
www.biorxiv.org
Reposted by Stein Aerts
oliverstegle.bsky.social
Job alert: Join us for a postdoc in AI in genetics at @EMBL Heidelberg! Great collaboration with @Adrian Cortes @GSK, aiming to develop new tools to elucidate genetic effects using population-scale cohorts and single-cell readouts. Please share!

embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/de-DE/EMBL/d...
Postdoctoral Researcher in Computational Genetics
The research group of Oliver Stegle looks for a postdoctoral researcher to join a collaborative project with GSK with the goal to apply computational methods to investigate the effects of rare variant...
embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com
Reposted by Stein Aerts
avsecz.bsky.social
Excited to launch our AlphaGenome API goo.gle/3ZPUeFX along with the preprint goo.gle/45AkUyc describing and evaluating our latest DNA sequence model powering the API. Looking forward to seeing how scientists use it! @googledeepmind
Reposted by Stein Aerts
anshulkundaje.bsky.social
This a really exciting leap forward for genomic sequence to activity gene regulation models. It is a genuine improvement over pretty much all SOTA models spanning a wide range of regulatory, transcriptional and post-transcriptional processes. 1/
avsecz.bsky.social
Excited to launch our AlphaGenome API goo.gle/3ZPUeFX along with the preprint goo.gle/45AkUyc describing and evaluating our latest DNA sequence model powering the API. Looking forward to seeing how scientists use it! @googledeepmind
Reposted by Stein Aerts
axelvisel.bsky.social
Textbooks: “Enhancers are just a bunch of TFBSs”

But how do they REALLY work?

New paper with many contributors here @berkeleylab.lbl.gov, @anshulkundaje.bsky.social, @anusri.bsky.social

A 🧵 (1/n)

Free access link: rdcu.be/erD22
A meme-style comic panel with three parts. Left: A stylized enhancer with a mutation, surrounded by colored blocks representing functional motifs, a neural network diagram, chromatin accessibility signal traces, and a sequence motif. Two cartoon mouse embryos below show different LacZ reporter activity patterns. Top right: A hand hovers anxiously between two red buttons labeled “Experiments” and “AI,” with the caption “HOW DO ENHANCERS REALLY WORK?” Bottom right: A sweating superhero wipes his forehead, looking stressed about the difficult choice.