Enard/Hellmann Lab

Hellnardos at 13th GSCN conference @gscnoffice.bsky.social. We are excited about the next 3 days of stem cell science! 🧫

🎉 Big congrats to Philipp Janssen for defending his PhD! 🎓
He’s been a key part of the lab, contributing to many projects, including scRNAseq background and cross-species cell type comparisons, and always ready with new ideas (& coffee).
We’re sad to see him go but excited to see what comes next!

We’re excited to host @nkschaefer.bsky.social from the Pollen Lab @brainevodevo.bsky.social, UCSF!
He’ll present Cellbouncer, a new bioinformatic tool for pooled single-cell processing that yields insights into hominid evolution 🧬

More about the lab 👉 www.pollenlab.org

Big congratulations to @pascalstuempfl.bsky.social, who successfully defended his Master’s thesis “Gene Network Conservation Metrics – Development and Benchmarking” last Friday! It’s been a pleasure having you in the group, and we’re excited to see what comes next — well done, Pascal! 🎉👏

I am thrilled to finally share our new preprint on prime-seq2 🚀
We improved one of the most cost-efficient bulk RNAseq protocols out there to end up with +60% usable reads.
Check it out: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
a🧵1/9

For those who want to try it in the lab:
we also published a step-by-step, easy-to-follow protocol for prime-seq2 🧪
👉 dx.doi.org/10.17504/pro...

Improving RNA-seq protocols Bulk and single-cell RNA-seq are powerful tools for transcriptomic analysis, providing insights into many aspects of molecular and cellular phenotypes. Costs constrain the amount of biological insight...

🎉Excited to share our new preprint: “Improving RNA-seq protocols”
We introduce a systematic approach to maximize usable reads in RNA-seq.
With this, we created prime-seq2, improving one of the most cost-efficient bulk RNAseq protocols.
👉Check it out: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Meet the TAs’ offices (5/5)

✨ Ines takes care of all the details that keep things organized
📑 Mrs Zhao is running the secretary
⛰️ Karin is mostly retired, but still comes in to help out
🧫 Sara is our greatest help in cell culture & ordering
Together, they make everything work smoothly 💙

Office (4/5): Welcome to the PIs offices

We are handling dogs, budgets, people, projects and databases.

Ines with Elly is running the dry lab
Wolfgang with Mo is running the wet lab

It’s such a privilege to work with all these wonderful people ❤️ and we have the best jobs we can imagine.

What do zombies 🧟, hostages ⛓️‍💥 and orphans 🧸 have in common?

The „Wandertag“ of the Hellnardos in escape rooms!

Can you guess who was in which room?

@pascalstuempfl.bsky.social

Office introduction series (3/5):

We are the single cell squad (scQUAD) 🙌
⛓️ Dana links peaks to genes
🕸️ Anita compares gene regulatory networks across primates
🎛️ Pascal tunes conservation metrics

Office (2/5):
Welcome to the Pee-to-Profile Office!
🧪 Johanna developed a protocol to reprogram iPSCs from primate urine cells,
🧠 Manqi uses them to make neurons to study FOXP2,
🧫 Eva differentiates them to macrophages for cross-species comparisons and
📈 Daniel extends prime-seq to profile them all!

No, fortunately, Wilma’s integrity testing doesn’t include human muscle fibers (yet).

@schaffmayer.bsky.social
@antoniake.bsky.social
@felixpfoertner.bsky.social

This is the beginning of our office introduction series (1/5):

Meet the office of Leo, Antonia with Wilma and Felix
Leo 🧠 maps FOXP2 brains
Antonia 🧫 reprograms cross-species cells
Felix ⚙️ drives Part 2 of every project
Wilma 🐶 heads cable-integrity testing by chewing
#LabLife #BlueskyScience

🎉 50 years of the Faculty of #Biology - and 20 years of interdisciplinary work at the #Biocenter! “Biology today is a big data science,” says Professor Stibor. AI, biodiversity loss & synthetic biology will be key topics of the future.📖 To the interview: www.lmu.de/en/newsroom/...

New paper from the group!
📃 doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
We investigated orthologous cell types in primate EBs and found that marker genes don't transfer well across species.
Check it out for insights into cross-species scRNA-seq and explore the data in our shiny app:
🔎 shiny.bio.lmu.de/Cross_Specie...

3D Epigenome Evolution Underlies Divergent Gene Regulatory Programs in Primate Neural Development The expansion of the neocortex is a hallmark of human evolution and is closely linked to neural stem cell biology. Yet, the epigenetic mechanisms driving divergent gene regulation during primate neuro...

🚨New preprint from @bonevlab.bsky.social 🚨: What are the key epigenetic mechanisms that drive species-specific gene regulation during primate neurogenesis - and how do they contribute to the evolution of the human neocortex?
Here’s what we discovered 👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The Enard/Hellmann group is now on bluesky 🦋
We are looking forward to reconnecting with everyone here and to welcoming new followers.
Let’s keep up great science interactions online!