Pierre Bourguet

MORC2 directs transcription-dependent CpG methylation of human LINE-1 transposons in early neurodevelopment Methylation of CpG dinucleotides is essential for silencing genomic repeats such as LINE-1 retrotransposons (L1s) in the germline and soma. Evolutionarily-young L1s are transcribed in human pluripoten...

Very proud of this work where we define how the MORC2 ATPase directs CpG methylation of active human L1 transposons in early development.

Thanks to co-authors, funders & wonderful environment @lundstem.bsky.social

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

Brief thread below (do people still do that?) 1/X

I can only recommend working with Heïdi at the GReD, she is a terrific scientist and human being! Clermont-Ferrand has high quality of life, is affordable and the surrounding nature is a beauty.

Bimodal centromeres in pentaploid dogroses shed light on their unique meiosis - Nature Insights into the dogrose genome and centromeres explain their ability to achieve stable sexual reproduction.

1/7
I am very excited to announce our🌹NEW PAPER OUT IN 𝑁𝐴𝑇𝑈𝑅𝐸!🌹
𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐕𝐄: Bimodal centromeres in pentaploid dogroses shed light on their unique meiosis
With the Ritz and Kovařík labs we show a potential role for centromeres on 𝘙𝘰𝘴𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘢 bizarre reproduction!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/ How many hours do bioinformaticians lose matching sample IDs across assays?
Too many.
And it’s avoidable.
Let’s talk about why this happens—and how to stop it.

Boromir Meme: One does not simply select the longest ORF

I am super excited to announce the first (brief) pre-print purely from my group:

Start right to end right: authentic open reading frame selection matters

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

This marks a return to NMD research for me. NMD detects early stop codons but we need to find the true stop!

Genomic and genetic insights into Mendel’s pea genes - Nature Characterization of the genetic architecture underlying the 7 pairs of contrasting traits studied by Mendel and the over 70 additional agronomic traits in pea (Pisum sativum) reveals their m...

The rest of Mendel's alleles characterized! So, out of 7 traits, 3 caused by TE insertions!!! (though apparently there are two different green alleles, one cause by a TE insertion, but another a promoter deletion allele)

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Maternal control of RNA decay safeguards embryo development As in mammals, the plant embryo is surrounded by maternal tissues that provide protection from the external environment. In angiosperms, a double fertilization process results in the formation of a di...

🚨 Preprint alert!!
Thrilled to share our new story where we report the discovery of a new sporophytic maternal-effect mutant in Arabidopsis. 🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The (molecular) shape of you New methods allow scientists to use a powerful technique known as cryo-EM to examine proteins that have been difficult to study so far.

🧪 A new method called MagIC-Cryo-EM allows scientists to use powerful #CryoEM techniques to examine proteins that have been difficult to study so far.

The pitfalls of class prediction in omics 🧵
1/ You think you’ve built the perfect omics predictor.
The accuracy is high. The p-value is low.
But is it real—or just a story your data whispered back?

A three year postdoctoral position is available in my group, investigating plant centromere structure, function and evolution @camplantsci.bsky.social
www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/51488/

Super cool work on the function of intrinsically disordered regions in regulating transcription factor DNA binding.

‘Landmark’ evolution study shows how rice inherits tolerance to cold without DNA changes The study adds to evidence challenging the dominance of ‘natural selection’ as the sole adaptive force in evolution.

[Daily Watch] Rice plants inherit cold tolerance through epigenetic changes. Landmark study challenges traditional evolution views. #Evolution #Epigenetics #PlantScience www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Horizontal transmission of functionally diverse transposons is a major source of new introns | PNAS Since the discovery of spliceosomal introns in eukaryotic genomes, the proximate molecular and evolutionary processes that generate new introns hav...

Transposable elements are a major driver of intron gain in eukaryotes, and are capable of transmission between diverse species #HGT #evolution - www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Cryptic infection of a giant virus in a unicellular green alga Latency is a common strategy in a wide range of viral lineages, but its prevalence in giant viruses remains unknown. In this work, we describe a 617–kilo–base pairs integrated giant viral element in t...

A giant virus in the genome of Chlamydomonas - this week in @science.org
#plantscience

Cryptic infection of a giant virus in a unicellular green alga | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Distribution of haploid chromosomes into separate nuclei in two pathogenic fungi Nuclei define eukaryotes, enabling macromolecular compartmentalization and cellular regulation. Each nucleus is believed to contain one or more haploid sets of chromosomes (1N). However, we discovered...

This is wild. Chromosome distributions into different nuclei!

Distribution of haploid chromosomes into separate nuclei in two pathogenic fungi
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

At the GMI, we value collaboration that bridges diverse research areas. Our institute is looking for a Senior Group Leader to contribute to our mission of making fundamental discoveries that enhance our understanding of how plants and other autotrophic organisms function. 👇 Links below.

Delighted to see our work now published in @currentbiology.bsky.social. A great place for Bostrychia to stake its claim as an emerging red algal model system. Check it out here: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Massively parallel jumping assay decodes Alu retrotransposition activity - Nature Communications Here, the authors develop a high-throughput assay to measure the jumping potential of thousands of transposons in parallel.

Massively parallel jumping assay (MPJA) enables to test the jumping potential of thousands of transposons. Analysis of >160,000 Alu haplotypes identified transposition-asssociated domains. Amazing work by Navneet Matharu, Jingjing Zhao, Martin Kircher and many others.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Chromatin loops are an ancestral hallmark of the animal regulatory genome - Nature The physical organization of the genome in non-bilaterian animals and their closest unicellular relatives is characterized; comparative analysis shows chromatin looping is a conserved feature of ...

I’m very excited to share our work on the early evolution of animal regulatory genome architecture - the main project of my postdoc, carried out across two wonderful and inspirational labs of @arnausebe.bsky.social and @mamartirenom.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our new contribution to the quest to find causal GWAS genes! Sam Ghatan from my lab at @nygenome.org led a systematic comparison of eQTLs and CRISPRi+scRNA-seq screens. TL;DR: they provide highly complementary insights, with ortogonal pros and cons. 🧵👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited about the future of plant epigenetics?
Join us at the Keystone Symposium Plant Epigenetics & Epigenome Engineering in Fort Collins, October 13-16, 2025! keystonesymposia-19559593.hs-sites.com/%F0%9F%8C%BF...
Registration is open!
#PlantScience #Epigenetics #KeystoneSymposia

Solid work from the Choi lab, showing that H2A.W histone variants limit meiotic crossovers.

#Epigenetics
#PlantSci

SPO11 dimers are sufficient to catalyse DNA double-strand breaks in vitro - Nature A biochemical system recapitulates the hallmarks of meiotic double-strand break formation, with mouse SPO11 catalysing break formation in the absence of any partners and remaining covalently atta...

🥳Just published @nature.com. Over 25 years after the discovery of SPO11 as the enzyme responsible for initiating meiotic recombination, we finally succeeded in reconstituting its DNA cleavage activity.🧵
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Drosophila follicle showing retrotransposons (pink & yellow) expressed in somatic cells infecting the oocyte

1/ Transposable elements are often called "jumping genes" because they mobilize within genomes. 🧬
But did you know they can also jump 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 cells? 🤯
Our new study reveals how retrotransposons invade the germline directly from somatic cells.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A short thread 🧵👇

Diversity and evolution of chromatin regulatory states across eukaryotes Histone post-translational modifications (hPTMs) are key regulators of chromatin states, influencing gene expression, epigenetic memory, and transposable element repression across eukaryotic genomes. ...

Excited to share this story from the “Chromatin Dream Team” in the @arnausebe.bsky.social lab on chromatin evo across eukaryotes! 12 histone mark profiles from 12 species, including rhizarians, discobans, and cryptomonads. Read on to see what we found! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/n

Genetic basis of camouflage in an alpine plant and its long-term co-evolution with an insect herbivore Nature Ecology & Evolution - Multi-omics analysis reveals that a 254-bp transposon induces defensive camouflage in an alpine plant and reduces herbivory by caterpillars of a specialist...

Multi-omics analysis reveals that a 254-bp transposon induces defensive camouflage in an alpine plant and reduces herbivory by caterpillars of a specialist butterfly. Protective effects of this camouflage are reflected in the long-term dynamics of co-evolving plant and butterfly populations.

the link is broken!

New preprint of my postdoc work! We found a novel group of zinc-finger proteins that rapidly evolved in a lineage-specific manner to repress regulatory activities of transposon-derived sequences through anchoring nucleosomes. #TEsky

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Happy to share our manuscript on the in situ visualization of the copia retrotransposon in its final form today published in @cellcellpress.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex.... What’s new?

New paper alert! Arturo Marí-Ordóñez’s team show that _Spirodela polyrhiza_, the most ancient member of the duckweed family, uses an understudied epigenetic mechanism to mark old transposons without DNA methylation - contrary to other plants. Read more: https://bit.ly/4h47flb