Navin B. Ramakrishna

Job alert! 📣 I’m looking for a research assistant to join my new team @idrm.ox.ac.uk

Were using #zebrafish to understand gene-environment interactions that shape the heart 🫀generate natural diversity 🐸🐭 and contribute to congenital defects ❤️‍🩹

Full info below, and please share! 🫶🏻

bit.ly/467TO0M

📣 I'm excited to share our latest preprint!

We adapt and characterise a neurosphere-based CNCC differentiation protocol, and demonstrate utility for quantitative phenotyping and craniofacial disease modelling! 🧫

Read about Array-CNCC here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

@uoe-igc.bsky.social

Array-CNCC: precise aggregation and arrayed plating facilitate quantitative phenotyping of human cranial neural crest cells and craniofacial disease modelling https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.18.696654v1

Marking the end of The Company of Biologists' 100-year anniversary, the final journal cover of 2025 features members of BiO's community, including one of our founding Editors, past and present Editors in Chief, our academic Editors and some of the reviewers from BiO's Fast & Fair peer review initiative. We would like to thank them all for being part of BiO.

Issue 12 is complete!

Cover: Members of BiO's community, including a founding Editor, past & present Editors-in-Chief, our academic Editors and some of the reviewers from BiO's Fast & Fair peer review initiative. We would like to thank them all.
bit.ly/4piig6y

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...

An expanded registry of candidate cis-regulatory elements - Nature The existing ENCODE registry of candidate human and mouse cis-regulatory elements is expanded with the addition of new ENCODE data, integrating new functional data as well as new cell and tissue types...

Our paper on the newest version of the Registry of candidate cis-Regulatory Elements (cCREs) is out 🧬

Huge thanks to the many collaborators, experimentalists, analysts and software developers who made this work possible — truly a team effort!

A "meme-torial" of the science is coming soon 👀

The transcription of a single olfactory receptor per neuron is enforced by epigenetic silencing of their enhancers The ability to discriminate thousands of odors in our environment requires each olfactory neuron to express a single olfactory receptor from hundreds of available genes. The biochemical mechanism enfo...

This went under the radar but answers a fundamental question in Epigenetics...

From many hundreds of olfactory receptor genes, each neuron selects expression of only single one (near-randomly). How?

Outstanding work from Mathieu Boulard and colleagues

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

Collage of students in lab coats conducting experiments, analyzing data, and collaborating on research. Includes logos for JEI and eJRXIV, conveying a theme of scientific inquiry.

Helping the next generation of scientists find their voice. 📣

Discover how @seahsamantha.bsky.social empowers students through her path from preLights to Executive Editor of the Journal of Emerging Investigators.

Interview: prelights.biologists.com/news/from-pr...

I don't think scientists should work for anyone else. They should work for discovery and for their own curiosity.
–Maria Leptin, ERC President @marialep.bsky.social on 'The Night Science Podcast'

The human endogenous retroviral envelope HEMO protein interacts with BACE2: Novel partnership acquired in the primate lineage - PubMed Endogenous retroviruses (ERV) represent 8 to 10% of mammalian genome. While most ERV are defective, a few retroviral genes, such as the envelope syncytins, were exapted during evolution and likely contributed to the emergence of placental mammals. We have previously identified the oldest full-length …

Another envelope protein in the human genome. Expressed in the placenta, of course.

High-quality mouse reference genomes reveal the structural complexity of the murine protein-coding landscape Helmy et al. provide a collection of high-quality mouse reference genomes. They were able to resolve some of the most complex regions among mouse genomes that are involved in immune defense. These fin...

High-quality mouse reference genomes [PacBio Long Read genomes of 17 strains] reveal the structural complexity of the murine protein-coding landscape, Cell Genomics. www.cell.com/cell-genomic... Genomes and annotations here: projects.ensembl.org/mouse_genomes/

🚨Reposts appreciated‼️If I had read this PhD offer five years ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated for a second to apply 😉
Passionate about gene regulation, chromatin, and developmental biology? Just contact @radaiglesiaslab.bsky.social at @ibbtec.bsky.social 🧬✨

#PhD #3DGenome

In vitro oogenesis breaks free of the ovary In this issue of Developmental Cell, Nosaka et al. differentiate mouse pluripotent stem cells to large germinal vesicle-stage oocyte-like cells in the absence of ovarian somatic cells. Their paradigm ...

Research Highlight: Mouse In vitro oogenesis breaks free of the ovary www.cell.com/developmenta... @cp-devcell.bsky.social

🚀 Looking for talented PhD students!
Join us in 🇸🇬 Singapore for 1-2 years to push the frontiers of AI for Genomics.
Work on:
🧬 Cancer genome reconstruction
🧫 Cancer genome & cell foundation models
💊 RNA drug & mRNA therapeutic design

#AI #Genomics #PhD
1/5

Complete genome assemblies of two mouse subspecies reveal structural diversity of telomeres and centromeres - Nature Genetics Telomere-to-telomere assemblies of two mouse inbred strains, C57BL/6J and CAST/EiJ, offer improvements over the current mouse reference genome by adding telomere and centromere sequences that lead to ...

Learn more in the open access Nature Genetics paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are recuiting two new Associate Professors here in Oxford Biochemistry. Come join us! Reach out to me if you have any questions. Please repost! tinyurl.com/mr3m7bd3

A mosaic of modular variation at a single gene underpins convergent plumage coloration The reshuffling of genomic variation from multiple origins is an important contributor to phenotypic diversification, yet insights into the evolutionary trajectories of this combinatorial process and ...

A TE insertion controls throat colour in wheatears. The gene involved (ASIP) is the same one that is epigenetically affected by an IAP insertion the famous Avy mice.

As if we needed more reasons to love TEs.

The quest to make babies with lab-grown eggs and sperm Sex cells made from scratch could revolutionize human reproduction. But researchers are struggling to translate promising results in mice into benefits for humans.

The quest to make babies with lab-grown eggs and sperm.
An excellent news feature by Nature: tempered optimism, with critical caveats underscored. And great to see commentary from so many names in the field! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The 'Handler genome' of OSCs, a rare and stably growing cell line that runs a piRNA pathway to silence transposons.

Dominik (@86dominik.bsky.social) assembled the genome of this Drosophila cell line.

Besides making some cool findings, the goal was to turn this into useful resource for the field.

Sperm sequencing reveals extensive positive selection in the male germline - Nature A combination of whole-genome NanoSeq with deep whole-exome and targeted NanoSeq is used to accurately characterize mutation rates and genes under positive selection in sperm cells.

Read ‘Sperm sequencing reveals extensive positive selection in the male germline’ from @sangerinstitute.bsky.social and collaborators in @nature.com below:

nature.com/articles/s41...

It is with great sadness that we share the news of the death of our founder, colleague, mentor and friend, Professor Sir John Gurdon. His vision and dedication will continue to inspire generations of scientists.
🔗 www.gurdon.cam.ac.uk/nobel-laurea...

Nobel Laureate Professor Sir John Gurdon dies aged 92 It is with great sadness that the University shares the news of the death of Professor Sir John Gurdon, founder of the Gurdon Institute.

Sad to hear this. John was a brilliant scientist and also someone who engaged with everyone personally & as equals, especially young scientists and students. www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

Nobel Laureate Professor Sir John Gurdon dies aged 92 It is with great sadness that the University shares the news of the death of Professor Sir John Gurdon, founder of the Gurdon Institute.

So sad to hear the news - John truly was an inspiration to so many, and one of a kind.

www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

An interview with Azim Surani Professor Azim Surani is the Director of Epigenomics and Germline Imprinting at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, UK. He is this year's recipient of both the prestigious Kyoto Prize and the Paul Ehrl...

Very candid responses from Azim Surani here on his initially turbulent scientific journey, & accounts of genomic imprinting and the pioneering of mammalian scRNA-seq. Great to see this put together by Ashley Moffett & @geraldinejowett.bsky.social journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

A human-specific regulatory mechanism revealed in a pre-implantation model Nature - Genetic manipulation of blastoids reveals the role of recently emerged transposable elements and genes in human development.

Today in @nature.com, we present our work leveraging functional genomics and human blastoids to uncover a human-specific mechanism in preimplantation development driven by the endogenous retrovirus HERVK.
Special thanks to the reviewers whose comments improved our manuscript a lot! rdcu.be/eI3tD

Excited to share our latest News & Views published in Nature! @nature.com
rdcu.be/eI2NJ

Sherif Khodeer and I discuss how stem cell-based embryo models provide evidence that viral DNA sequences that entered the human genome in the past were repurposed to aid early stages of embryonic development.

I do think this human egg story is being massively overhyped. To be clear, no eggs have been "generated", "created" or "made" from human skin cells - rather, existing human eggs have been given the DNA from skin cells using a kind of cloning 1/

Embryonic signatures of intergenerational epigenetic inheritance across paternal environment & genetic background
@jamiehackett.bsky.social et al @embl.org see transcriptome changes in offspring after fertilisation by fathers exposed to gut dysbiosis or western diet
www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

New paper from my lab and @jshendure.bsky.social lab! Led by the brilliant @zukailiu.bsky.social and @cxqiu.bsky.social. We tackled how anterior and posterior progenitor cells cooperate to self-organize into an embryonic structure (termed AP-gastruloid). (1/n) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A schematic summary of the IVF procedure.

In vitro fertilisation (IVF) pioneer Bob Edwards was born 100 years ago today. Learn more about how his legacy has contributed to both assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and developmental biology in this Primer by Martin Johnson

doi.org/10.1242/dev....