Navin B. Ramakrishna

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....

This year @ericmiska.bsky.social lab celebrates 20 years of science! 🥳We marked the occasion with a wonderful gathering of past and present members, sharing memories, discoveries, and friendships. Here’s to the next 20 years of breakthroughs and collaboration🥂 @cambiochem.bsky.social

Our study on the role of LTR5HS and SVAs in regulation of human neural crest migration is now published as peer-reviewed paper on @molsystbiol.org!
Congrats to first author brilliant postdoc Laura Deelen, and all the authors involved! @imperialsci.bsky.social
www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

Functional maps of a genomic locus reveal confinement of an enhancer by its target gene Genes are often activated by enhancers located at large genomic distances, and the importance of this positioning is poorly understood. By relocating promoter-reporter constructs into thousands of alt...

✨Exciting news: the main story of my PhD is out in Science!

Together with Christine Moene @cmoene.bsky.social, we explored what happens when you scramble the genome—revealing how Sox2’s position shapes enhancer activation.

📖 Read the full story here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Thrilled to share that our Group Leader Prof. Azim Surani, together with Prof. Davor Solter, has been awarded the 2026 Paul Ehrlich & Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize 🎉 for discovering genomic imprinting—a breakthrough that reshaped genetics and launched modern epigenetics.

Sad to miss it - but hope it was an excellent one!

Functional maps of a genomic locus reveal confinement of an enhancer by its target gene Genes are often activated by enhancers located at large genomic distances, and the importance of this positioning is poorly understood. By relocating promoter-reporter constructs into thousands of alt...

Functional maps of a genomic locus reveal confinement of an enhancer by its target gene by the @basvansteensellab.bsky.social

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

PIWI clade Argonautes are essential for transposon silencing. Without them, animals are sterile due to massive transposon activity.

But how does piRNA-guided target interaction translate into silencing?

PhD student Júlia Portell Montserrat has an intriguing answer

www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Clearly a hot topic - 2 timely review articles on human primordial germ cell specification in the span of 5 days! In
@biologists.bsky.social (Development) doi.org/10.1242/dev...., & @natrevmcb.nature.com below:

Great to see this commentatry on the need for systematic single-cell mapping of cis-regualtory elements: from Yi Xiang, Tim Stuart and Jay Shin @astar-gis.bsky.social @jayshin.bsky.social

Illustrator on our side! (For me, I’m lucky to still have institutional access and not had to pivot yet).

Schematics of our increasing knowledge of in vivo human primordial germ cell development, and a summary of the exciting hPGCLC maturation protocols:
@dev-journal.bsky.social @biologists.bsky.social

Austin Smith points out that naive pluripotent cells in the embryo only self- renew rarely, if ever.

In response to some heckling from the faculty, he says “You can call ES cells artifacts if you want, but they’re still bloody marvellous” 😃

#SCSS2025

record 17,058 Marie Curie proposals in 2025 vs. 10,360 in 2024!!! the reason is pretty obvious, but wow that is a huge jump marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/news/msca-po...

Together with Wolfram Gruhn and João Pedro Alves-Lopes, we’re extremely grateful to @dev-journal.bsky.social @biologists.bsky.social for the opportunity. It was a pleasure to re-connect and co-write with Surani lab alumni, commemorating a decade since the first hPGCLC protocols were published.

We focus on the 1st trimester of hPGC development: specification, migration and gonadal development, focusing on the niche, epigenetics & transcriptome. We then comment on how such profiles can benchmark early in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) - i.e. hPGCLC protocols spanning this period.