Debby Silver

Thanks Madeline!!

Grateful to additional fantastic co-authors including
@jingliu1129.bsky.social , Katie Lam, Samantha Skavicus, Nick Heaton, Victoria Kapp. Also enormously grateful to funding from NIMH which made our discoveries possible.

Finally in a fantastic collaboration with Katie Pollard and Katie Gjoni, we discover nearby structural variants that stabilize its chromatin loops with these target genes, suggesting co-evolution of human-specific DNA changes.

It influences neurogenesis by controlling expression of two key target genes, ETV5 and TRA2B, through a positive feedback loop.

Using genomically-edited human and chimpanzee organoids, and mouse models, we show the human enhancer boosts progenitor proliferation and neuron production. We further show that human HAR1984 is sufficient to induce cortical folding in an otherwise smooth (lissencephalic) brain!

Sharing our newest study led by the incredibly talented @federicamosti.bsky.social investigating new molecular mechanisms of human brain development. We discover a human-specific enhancer HAR1984 that influences chromatin looping to promote cortical size and folding! www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

thanks so much Cedric!!

Congrats Megan and team! Looking forward to read!

Congrats Xin!

Thanks Sahil!

Thanks Silvia!!

Thanks so much Madeline!!

Thanks Giordano!

Thanks Keri!!

Thanks Santos!!

Thanks Charlie!

Thanks Loyal!!

Thanks Cedric!!

Thanks Mariah!

Mice grow bigger brains when given this stretch of human DNA Finding adds to the bigger picture of how humans developed such large brains.

Taking a snippet of genetic code that is unique to humans and inserting it into mice helps them grow bigger brains than usual

https://go.nature.com/3GOTQkz

Thanks Scott!!

Thanks Dmitry!!

Thanks Kaisha!!

Thanks Nitin!

Thanks George!

Thanks Akankshi!!

Thanks Mareike!!

Thanks Hyejung!!

Thanks Pierre!!

Thanks Julien!!