Fitz-James Lab

Would love to be added as well please!

Last day of #SMBE2025 in Beijing!
It was a real pleasure to talk about epimutation on Tuesday and to get to know lots of new researchers and their exciting work!

Traveling to Beijing for @official-smbe.bsky.social #SMBE 2025. I have both a talk and a poster on Tuesday on different aspects of epigenetic inheritance. Stop by if you’re there!

🚨Fantastic PhD opportunity for Autumn 2025 with our colleague Rebekah Tillotson @uoe-igc.bsky.social, asking whether ATRX syndrome is treatable:
sidb.org.uk/phds/tillots...
Please share 🙏
#epigenetics #raregeneticdisease #chromatinopathies

Transcription and Chromatin UK Manchester, UK 17-19 September 2025 Earlybird deadline: 17 July 2025

Taking place on 17-19 September 2025, Transcription and Chromatin UK will showcase cutting-edge research and is a ‘mustattend’ for anyone within the transcription and epigenetics community🧪. Register now: www.eventsforce.net/biochemsoc/2...

Postdoc positions open in my lab (Francis Crick Institute) to study

1. initiation of DNA replication.

2. chromatin replication/epigenetic inheritance.

Great for biochemists, biophysicists and cryo-EM/cryo-tomography scientists.

Deadline 3 August 2025.

crick.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job...

Great opportunity in a fun lab / cool city!

Transparent peer review to be extended to all of Nature’s research papers From today, all new submissions to Nature that are published will be accompanied by referees’ reports and author responses — to illuminate the process of producing rigorous science.

From today, every paper submitted to Nature -if published - will be accompanied by peer reviewers comments & authors rebuttal.

We started the trial in 2020; we now want to open up the review process & showcase its role in shaping & improving papers
🧪 #AcademicSky

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Clarifying the public misrepresentation of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -

A nice short reminder to be wary of the press overstating scientific claims

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

🚨Job Alert🚨

We are looking for a technician to join us in Oxford @biology.ox.ac.uk to study epigenetics and vibration-sensing:

my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

The work will be varied:
Arthropod culture 🕷️🪰
Lab work (DNA/RNA extraction, sequencing library preparation…)

Apply by Mon 23 June
🧪

Experimental embryology postdoc available in my lab at the @biology.ox.ac.uk @ox.ac.uk working on the evolution of vertebral counts. Reach out if you’re passionate about EvoDevo, enjoy lab work and microscopy and are into or could get into cichlid fishes. Deadline on the 16th June. Please share!

Very cool paper combining two of my favourite things: phylogeny and genome organisation

Fly Open access research on Drosophila developmental/evolutionary biology, organogenesis, neurobiology, circadian rhythms, learning & memory, sex determination

Fly journal is now on BlueSky! The world’s only academic journal dedicated to research on Drosophila & cognate insects. A fully open-access journal that combines rapid publication with high standards of peer-review. For further info and how to submit your work, see the link.

Our new review in @cp-trendscellbio.bsky.social is now online! We discuss the connection between the epigenome, 3D genome folding, gene expression and cellular memory, specifically in loop extrusion-independent contexts.

Postdoctoral Research Associate at University of Oxford Discover Postdoctoral Research Associate jobs and more in higher education on jobs.ac.uk. Apply for further details on the top job board.

TWO postdoc positions in Computational Microbiology and/or biochemistry. Join our interdisciplinary group in the new Life and Mind Building @OxfordBiology, @UniofOxford, @IneosOxford
Please apply and share this post:
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMP641/p...

Hello World! Are you passionate about epigenomics and evolution 🧪🧬🐭🐵 ? Are you looking for a postdoc in a stimulating and inclusive environment ? Look no further... We are seeking creative postdocs for our ERC project EvoEpi @igred.fr ! 👇Details👇
tinyurl.com/PostdocEvoEp...
Repost are appreciated

Something to ponder when considering which journal to submit to. Society owned journals are an important source of income for the community.

10/10 Very happy to have this paper out and for the wonderful work done with Peter and our students Poppy and Chris!

9/10 While we can’t fully explain this effect, this downregulation of Pho, with potential downstream effects on Polycomb targets, may be something to keep in mind when using Sb as a marker in future.

8/10 In following up on this unexpected result, we found that mutation of Sb has an effect on expression of Pho, a recruiter of the PRC2 complex responsible for depositing H3K27me3.

7/10 As controls for our sRNA pathway mutants we used some well-known marker mutations on the same chromosome. One of these, mutation in the gene Stubble (Sb) which is well-known to Drosophila enthusiasts, had a clear effect on eye colour, making it more red.

6/10 Next, we tested an array of mutants in sRNA pathways. Again, we found no effect of the mutations on eye colour, arguing against a role for sRNAs in eye colour. However, a surprising result involving one of our controls jumped out at us…

5/10 We decided to investigate whether sRNAs were contributing to Fab2L eye colour and its inheritance. First, we sequenced sRNAs in a variety of Fab2L lines with epigenetic and phenotypic differences. But we found no sRNAs mapping to the eye colour gene.

4/10 In many organisms (C. elegans, plants…) small non-coding RNAs are known to be passed through the germline and are often considered the true directly inherited signal, with other epigenetic signals being derived from them.

3/10 But is H3K27me3 the only epigenetic information involved? Epigenetic signals often work together, making it hard to tell if a particular signal is truly inherited, or simply reconstructed in each generation based on another inherited signal.

Interchromosomal contacts between regulatory regions trigger stable transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in Drosophila In some cases, non-genetic information can be inherited across generations. Fitz-James et al. investigate the mechanism by which such epigenetic information becomes heritable in fruit flies. They show...

2/10 The Drosophila Fab2L line has an epigenetic eye colour phenotype inherited across generations. Eye colour is determined by variation in H3K27me3 levels, and we recently investigated the mechanism by which differences in this mark first arise and become heritable.
www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Polycomb-mediated transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of Drosophila eye colour is independent of small RNAs | Open Biology Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (TEI) describes the process whereby distinct epigenetic states are transmitted between generations, resulting in heritable gene expression and phenotypic diffe...

1/10 Excited to share our recent work with @psarkies.bsky.social out in Open Biology today.

We follow up on a case of Drosophila epigenetic inheritance and find no evidence of sRNA involvement. Plus a surprising result of interest to Drosophilists!
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Postdoc opportunity in UK, Wellcome funded, 3 years, to investigate neurogenetics underlying how the brain changes throught life: plasticity vs degeneration. Drosophila, imaging, behaviour. Candidates of all nationalities welcome.
Application deadline 19 March.
Pls repost.
#Drosophila
#postdoc
#job

Postdoc or PhD working on C. elegans? Interested in applying C. elegans techniques to understand the astonishing world of epigenetics in parasitic nematodes? Apply to our Wellcome Trust funded postdoc position, joint between my lab in Oxford and Mark Viney's in Liverpool:
tinyurl.com/5y6cpvcv

Moving epigenetic inheritance into the space age: Evidence that 3D genome organization is required for the establishment of epigenetic memory In this issue, Fitz-James et al. use genetic manipulations to show that transient interchromosomal contacts between distant regulatory elements, mediated by the transcription factor GAF, can initiate ...

Wow! Incredibly grateful to Jessica Hawes and Alyson Ashe for their very kind preview of our paper for the current issue of Mol Cell! @cellpress.bsky.social

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