Sylvia Erhardt

Please share: we're hiring a new tenure-track faculty member to our Department of Genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

faculty-einstein.icims.com/jobs/17847/a...

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

Terrific paper on a new chromosomal
compartment where extensive loop
extrusion isolates domains from
other such domains

DOT1L provides transcriptional memory through PRC1.1 antagonism - Nature Cell Biology Neville, Ferguson et al. show that non-canonical Polycomb repressive complex 1.1-mediated gene silencing is antagonized by DOT1L and is required for the therapeutic efficacy of Menin and DOT1L inhibit...

H3K79me2/3 is sufficient to antagonise PRC1 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ad for a postdoc position in centromere biology with colorful chromosomes and centromeres made out of FIMO.

🧪 My lab has an opening for a postdoc position soon! Please share/get in touch!

Breaking Fundamental Biological Law: Research by Takashi Akera Investigates Selfish DNA - Vilcek Foundation Winner of the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, Akera’s novel research findings have huge implications for infertility and chromosomal disorders.

vilcek.org/news/breakin...

Congratulation and I hope you get accepted by JAXA soon 🚀

Congratulations!

Time for a thread on our Christmas preprint “Origin and evolution of acrocentric chromosomes in human and great apes”. I had so much fun with this project and paper. It will be hard to summarize in a thread, but I’ll try www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... [1/21]

Does the noncoding genome actually carry more genetic information than coding seqs? Motivated by this question we mutated every bp in the 10kb MYC locus. Results are even more exciting: Decoding the MYC locus reveals a druggable ultraconserved RNA element www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Maruxa Martínez: Dinou anys de compromís amb el PRBB i la ciència - El·lipse Des de la pionera presència a les xarxes fins a la transformació digital d’El·lipse, repassem els 19 anys de petjada de la Dra. Maruxa Martínez amb la cultura i la integritat del Parc.

1⃣9⃣ anys de compromís de Maruxa Martínez amb el PRBB. 

💪 Pionera en la presència del parc a les xarxes socials, arquitecta digital d'El·lipse i defensora de la integritat i la inclusió. 

Repassem el seu llegat 👇

3-panel comic. (1) [Three small arthropods on ocean floor.] ARTHROPOD 1: Now that we’re multicellular, what are your plans? I’m gonna evolve little legs and swim around with them! ARTHROPOD 2: I’m gonna evolve sharp pincers and use them to crunch stuff! ARTHROPOD 3: I’m gonna evolve glands to make string from my butt and use it to construct elaborate geometric nets hundreds of times my size to catch other animals. (2) [Silence] (3) ARTHROPOD 1: *Dude.* ARTHROPOD 2: Can you *please* just be normal about this? ARTHROPOD 3: *What??!*

Early Arthropods

xkcd.com/3199/

Beautiful!

📢 Three new #bioRxiv preprints from our team on holocentric chromosomes.

Together, they connect centromere repeat evolution, karyotype dynamics, and meiotic recombination outcomes, revealing how holocentric genomes evolve and function. 🧬👇

We are thrilled to share our new pre-print: “System-wide extraction of cis-regulatory rules from sequence-to-function models in human neural development”. S2F-deeplearning models can accurately encode enhancers, yet decoding these models into human-interpretable rules remains a major challenge.

Our Mini Review went online last night in Current Opinion in Genetics & Development
"Block copolymer concepts of how transcription organizes the stem cell genome"
doi.org/10.1016/j.gd...

Fig. 1: Stem cell–typical organization of the genome and transcription, and the block copolymer sorting concept.

Human eggs must segregate their chromosomes with exquisite precision — yet errors rise with maternal age, causing miscarriage & infertility.
Our new article on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social shows why chromosome cohesion fails in aging eggs & how to improve it.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... (1/10)

BIG FIGHT AT POLAND’S WROCLAW ZOO!!!

H4K16 acylations destabilize chromatin architecture and facilitate transcriptional response during metabolic perturbations Histone modifications play crucial roles in genome function. However, how chromatin integrates physiological and metabolic responses at the molecular …

Paper alert 🚨
Are you interested in the connection between epigenetics and metabolism? Then check out our new paper 🎁 👉 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧵1/3

Dual pathways via CENP-C and Mis18C recruit HJURP for CENP-A deposition into vertebrate centromeres - The EMBO Journal Centromere position is specified and maintained by sequence-independent epigenetic mechanisms in vertebrate cells, with the incorporation of the centromere-specific histone H3 variant CENP-A into chro...

Our renent paper on CENP-A deposition was just out in EMBO J. Please check it out. Congrats Tetsuta! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Interested in the unexpected? How about a link between piRNAs and maternal histone mRNAs … Great collab with @sebastianfalk.bsky.social, @koenig-lab.bsky.social and Florian Steiner.

#piRNA #histone #mRNA #maternal #RNAbiology #RNASky

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

a snippet of a mini-comic, at top - straight line stretches from point A to B. Immediately below, same dot at A, then becomes a curving, meandering line that winds through the page and ends at a point with rays and a question mark emanating from it. Text reads: "Nothing can do this for you - for that robs you of experience and conflates answers with learning. Rather, it's all the decisions you make along the way, the mistakes, struggles, and surprises! These pathways you create - this is learning. https://spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-syllabi/

In case anyone needs it for their syllabi, my statement in gen-Ai from the minicomic I made as a syllabus for class last semester. All online and printable here spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...

Photo of an outdoor sited sculpture resembling a huge spider created in metal. by the artwork two people walk by separately with umbrellas, the sculpture and ground have a covering of snoww

Maman (1999) by artist Louise Bourgeois #womensart #January

SMC and recombination enthusiasts: we updated our work describing the loop extrusion properties of budding yeast condensin and its function in biasing donor usage for mating-type switching. Lots of cool new data, check it out!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

RNA-coupled CRISPR screens reveal ZNF207 as a regulator of LMNA aberrant splicing in progeria This study introduces CRASP-seq, an RNA-coupled CRISPR screening platform designed to systematically identify regulatory factors and domains of alternative pre-mRNA splicing. Using this technology, ZNF207 is identified as a bona fide splicing regulator through its interaction with U1 snRNP components. ZNF207 modulates aberrant LMNA splicing, a critical event linked to progeria.

Online Now: RNA-coupled CRISPR screens reveal ZNF207 as a regulator of LMNA aberrant splicing in progeria Online now:

Brücke mit hohen Masten, dahinter Sonnenuntergang, der sich auf der rechten Seite im Wasser spiegelt. Das Ufer und der Weg zur Brücke sind verschneit.

#SilentSunday

Absolutely thrilled to share the latest work from my lab focused on the variation and evolution of human centromeres among global populations! We assembled 2,110 human centromeres, identifying 226 new major haplotypes and 1,870 α-satellite HOR variants. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🪱 Selfish genes are everywhere and drive some of biology’s biggest innovations (CRISPR, antibody recombination, epigenetics). Yet almost no one asks the obvious question: how does a selfish gene begin? Our new manuscript uncovers how selfishness can emerge directly from the host genome.

Well, that wasn’t what I expected. Outstanding book. Interesting plot twist. Discusses the deep disturbing ugliness of the eugenics movement in America. Heartbreaking but, hopeful too. Opens eyes to the limitations we place onto the natural world and ourselves in our attempts to order it.

Painting of four deer in silhouette running up a snowy hill by a forest towards a large orange setting sun

'The Running of the Deer' by contemporary UK artist Catherine Hyde #womensart