Genevieve Kendall, PhD

Dr. Genevieve Kendall and Dr. Benjamin Stanton’s labs pictured together.

Thank you to our collaborators - what a fantastic team. And we are incredibly grateful to our funders, including the NIH/NCI, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, the V Foundation for Cancer Research, St Baldrick’s Foundation, American Cancer Society, and CancerFree Kids for supporting our research.🎗️💛

Kucinski et al developed in vivo zebrafish systems to study how an oncogenic transcription factor drives an aggressive pediatric cancer. This supported understanding the oncogene’s earliest activities, where it uses different binding modes to bind silent genes and then activate them. These findings are depicted by zebrafish invading closed DNA (TAAT wrapped around pebbles) or open DNA (GATTACA in plants). Overall, studying early oncogenic activities in a dynamic developmental context reveals critical mechanisms for transformation.

We summarized our findings in this illustration (Credit: Mandy Root-Thompson) depicting zebrafish models to understand the fusion oncogene’s earliest activities, including invading closed DNA (TAAT wrapped around pebbles) or open DNA (GATTACA in plants) to activate neural programs.

Rhabdomyosarcoma fusion oncoprotein initially pioneers a neural signature in vivo Kucinski et al. use embryonic zebrafish modeling to understand initial chromatin regulatory mechanisms of fusion-driven pediatric rhabdomyosarcoma. They found that the PAX3::FOXO1 oncoprotein function...

We found that PAX3::FOXO1 invades inaccessible chromatin and induces neural programs as one of its earliest activities. We hope to leverage these new models to find actionable targets for children with rhabdomyosarcoma.

Highly quantitative measurement of differential protein-genome binding with PerCell chromatin sequencing Tallan et al. report a versatile approach for highly quantitative protein-genome binding, demonstrating applications for human and zebrafish cells. The proposed PerCell methodology and analysis strate...

These studies were led by graduate students @jackkucinski.bsky.social and Alexi Tallan as part of their dissertation research. We wanted to understand how PAX3::FOXO1 initially interfaces with #chromatin in vivo and developed a new #zebrafish model and analytical pipeline to do so.

Very proud of our partner papers in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social and @cp-cellrepmethods.bsky.social from collaborative work in my lab and Benjamin Stanton's lab focused on fusion-positive #rhabdomyosarcoma. #TeamFishAndChIPs

Congratulations!!! 🎉

🚨🚨🚨 Tol2kit announcement! We have rebuilt the wiki that was corrupted a few months ago! We’re in the process of also linking it to the original address. Please visit us here:
tol2kitkwan.genetics.utah.edu
Thank you for your patience!!
#zebrafish #transgenesis #plasmids #sharing

Blocking protein recycling may help fight anaplastic Wilms tumor.

Our study, led by Dr. Patricia Tiburcio, showed that blocking protein recycling may help fight anaplastic Wilms Tumor—a rare, aggressive childhood kidney cancer. Combining bortezomib with dactinomycin made tumors more sensitive to treatment in the lab. doi.org/10.1016/j.xc...

We are excited to announce the winner of the George Streisinger Award, the 2025 MBL Course Directors! The Streisinger Award will be presented to them at the 19th IZFC in Madison, WI, where they will also present the Award Lecture. Congratulations to all of them!

ZDM18 Abstract Submission — ZDMS

Abstract deadline for #ZDM18 in Boston ends tonight (EST) for those to be considered for oral talks. More details here: www.zdmsociety.org/zdm18-abstra... #ZebrafishMeeting

Zebrafish + behavior?
You come to the right place!
Join us for the ZDMS webinar on Wednesday, June 4th at 10AM ET. Four incredible speakers will be sharing their expertise!
Sign up here 👇
www.zdmsociety.org/2025-zdms-ri...
#zebrafish #neuroscience

MIC-Drop-seq: Scalable single-cell phenotyping of mutant vertebrate embryos Pooled perturbation screens can reveal cellular regulatory networks, yet scaling these techniques for large-scale screens in animals remains challenging. To address this, we developed MIC-Drop-seq, wh...

To dissect the gene regulatory networks used to build organisms, we need Perturb-seq-like tools that work in whole animals.

For this purpose, we developed MIC-Drop-seq, a tool that couples high-throughput CRISPR in zebrafish embryos with single-cell RNAseq.

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

Conservation of regulatory elements with highly diverged sequences across large evolutionary distances Nature Genetics - Combining functional genomic data from mouse and chicken with a synteny-based strategy identifies positionally conserved cis-regulatory elements in the absence of direct sequence...

How to find Evolutionary Conserved Enhancers in 2025? 🐣-🐭
Check out our paper - fresh off the press!!!
We find widespread functional conservation of enhancers in absence of sequence homology
Including: a bioinformatic tool to map sequence-diverged enhancers!
rdcu.be/enVDN
github.com/tobiaszehnde...

Free Webinar - Cancer research using zebrafish models, #ZDMS 2025 Cancer RIG Meet-up on Wednesday 28 May (10-11.30AM EST) exciting stories by rising stars of zebrafish cancer research field us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi....

Image of the logo for the Zebrafish Disease Models Conference (ZDM18). Text that reads 'ZDM18 Boston, MA, USA 2025' and two silhouettes of zebrafish that are black and red.

Attention ZDMS Members and greater fish community:

A message from the Local Organizing Committee for #ZDM18!

The Zebrafish Disease Models Society is excited to host ZDM18 in Boston in October! Read this thread for more about the conference and its upcoming deadlines. (1/8)

This year’s 11 NextGen Stars will share their findings on cancer cartography, the dark proteome, cancer-resistant tissues, and more at #AACR25. Learn more about their work and its future implications on the #AACRBlog: www.aacr.org/blog/2025/04...

The Kendall Lab is at #AACR25! Jack Kucinski is presenting in the Developmental Origins and Drivers of Pediatric Cancers poster session on Monday afternoon. Chinmay Sankhe and Delia Calderon are presenting at the Pediatric Cancer Models poster session on Tuesday morning. Hope to see you there!

I really enjoyed my conversation with Rita Fior for our inaugural feature on zebrafish in translational research!

Just finished up the materials for a intro to R workshop I'm running for folks at work. Thought I would post the GitHub to the materials here as well in case it was of use to anyone else: github.com/MVesuviusC/R...

🧬 🖥️ #bioinformatics #genomics #tidyverse #R #rstats #programming #r4ds

This issue of #GENETICS offers updates on 6 model organism databases & knowledgebases: buff.ly/Mn0hIzl
🔎 AgBioData Consortium
🔎 Candida Genome Database
🔎 Saccharomyces Genome Database
🔎 SpudDB
🔎 Unified Phenotype Ontology
🔎 Zebrafish Information Network

Remember to cite your community resources!

It was a fantastic meeting. Thank you for organizing!

Now @michaelhoffman.bsky.social starting his talk on inferring transcription factor binding from different data modalities. Loved the reference to Cunningham’s law #AACRprecmed25

Wonderful talk!

Now: @alice.soragnilab.com: Patient-derived tumor organoid models to identify drug susceptibilities in rare cancers #AACRprecmed25 🧪🧬🖥️

Elaine Mardis giving introductory remarks

Keith Flaherty starting his lecture

This first AACR meeting on functional and genomic precision medicine has officially started! Dr. Mardis gave the introductory remarks followed by our first plenary speaker, Dr. Flaherty, who will focus on the collision of genomic and functional precision medicine #AACRPM25

Rare genetic disorder treated in womb for the first time The child, who is now almost three years old, shows no signs of the often fatal motor neuron disease.

A two-and-a-half-year-old girl shows no signs of a rare genetic disorder, after becoming the first person to be treated for the motor-neuron condition while in the womb.

https://go.nature.com/41a7Zzj

Special shout out this AM to NIH 🧪 grant mgmt specialists, POs, and SROs during this chaotic time - THANK YOU for caring for our grants and uploading scores/summary statements despite the unprecedented challenges you may be facing. You are science warriors and we APPRECIATE & SUPPORT YOU 🫶

Congratulations!!! 🎉🎉🐟

I am deeply grateful to the extremely hard-working and dedicated staff at the NIH and NSF. Thank you to all of the Program Officers, Scientific Review Officers, Grants Management Specialists, and so many more, who have made the engine of US science and innovation run.

Switching fields to #zebrafish? Wanting to become an expert in zebrafish research? Check-out the @mblscience.bsky.social 2025 Zebrafish Development & Genetics course – a fantastic opportunity to learn from leaders in the field!

Application deadline: March 13

www.mbl.edu/education/ad...