Colin Conine

Physiologic variation in sperm miRNAs tune embryonic gene regulatory programs and developmental outcomes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.04.709527v1

Comparison of extracellular vesicles and mechanically induced vesicles for structure determination of membrane proteins https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.04.709473v1

I am so proud to share @forrestdrogers.bsky.social’s postdoctoral magnum opus, now out in @nature.com! Forrest discovered a novel role for Agouti in the MPOA of the hypothalamus to integrate socio-environmental information to flexibly tune paternal behavior
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Thread! 👇🏻

New preprint in collab with Capelson & Schindler labs):
Nuclear pore complexes are developmentally removed and rebuilt during oocyte specification. Blocking turnover prevents gene silencing and meiotic entry.
Nuclear architecture renewal is required for cell fate.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Mechanisms linking cytoplasmic decay of translation-defective mRNA to transcriptional adaptation Transcriptional adaptation (TA) is a genetic robustness mechanism through which mutant messenger RNA (mRNA) decay induces sequence-dependent up-regulation of so-called adapting genes. How cytoplasmica...

@science.org Mechanisms linking cytoplasmic decay of translation-defective mRNA to transcriptional adaptation | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

RBPscan: A quantitative in vivo tool for profiling RNA-binding protein interactions Kretov et al. introduce RBPscan, an RNA-editing-based platform that measures how RNA-binding proteins engage their targets in living cells. This approach quantifies the binding strength of protein-RNA...

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

We are recruiting a PhD student!

A fully-funded position at The University of Newcastle, Australia. The candidate will be part of a team investigating how the sperm RNA profile is shaped. See more in link below or get in touch.

Two tiers of piRNA clusters balance diversification of piRNAs with limitation of off-target effects https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.28.702291v1

Germline fate determination by a single ARGONAUTE protein in Ectocarpus | PNAS ARGONAUTE (AGO) proteins are a highly conserved family of RNA-binding proteins that play central roles in gene regulation and developmental process...

One protein. One pathway. A whole germline fate.

New paper from my postdoc @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social out in PNAS:
Germline fate determination by a single ARGONAUTE protein in Ectocarpus www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

And for this, I admire them both so much.

No one is coming to save us. We have to be the change we want to see in the world and that always starts with making some changes within ourselves. We can start by reimagining ourselves to meet the moment.

If Victor can do it, we can do it too. ❤️✊🏼

Common variation in meiosis genes shapes human recombination and aneuploidy - Nature Analysis of data from pre-implantation genetic testing sheds light on the genetic basis of meiotic-origin aneuploidy, the leading cause of human pregnancy loss, identifying common genetic variants ass...

Pregnancy loss is common in humans, and chromosomal abnormalities are the leading cause. Using genetic data from ~140,000 IVF embryos, we show that maternal variation in meiosis genes influences recombination and aneuploidy risk.

First authors: @saracarioscia.bsky.social & @aabiddanda.github.io

I get a lot of Coline, and I’m not sure what’s worse, that or the double LL

A nowhere-to-hide mechanism ensures complete piRNA-directed DNA methylation - Nature In mice, a SPOCD1–TPR-dependent ‘nowhere-to-hide’ mechanism is required for complete non-stochastic piRNA-directed LINE1 DNA methylation by preventing transposons from escaping surveillance within heterochromatin.

Nature research paper: A nowhere-to-hide mechanism ensures complete piRNA-directed DNA methylation

go.nature.com/4pDVgPq

None of RNA’s remarkably versatile forms are built to last — not even within the cell that they came from. www.quantamagazine.org/cells-across...

a man wearing a plaid shirt and a purple hat is saying here we go . ALT: a man wearing a plaid shirt and a purple hat is saying here we go .

Our paper on the Expanded Registry of candidate cis-Regulatory Elements (cCREs) is out 🎉
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

To celebrate, here’s a "meme-torial" walkthrough of the science.

Let’s get started 🧵 1/11

Read in Nature: nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09899-8

Stress controls epigenetic inheritance!

A histone ubiquitylation-based regulatory hub links stress/environmental signaling to heterochromatin self-propagation and epigenetic inheritance-reshaping how we think about development, drug resistance, and cancer
👉 nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09899-8

We are thrilled to share our latest work uncovering the mechanistic basis of target-directed microRNA degradation (TDMD). This work was driven by @jakobfarnung.bsky.social and @elenaslo.bsky.social in a fantastic collaboration with Brenda Schulman's lab. tinyurl.com/E3TDMD (1/5)

Is that Mpox in Your Balls or Are You Just Happy to See This Preprint? Deez disordered seminiferous tubules

Mpox is transmitted by sex, but is it transmitted by semen?

We first need to know if the virus is actually replicating in the testes, so that’s what we set out to find, led by @akelvinlab.bsky.social

Yep, there’s MPXV growing in those balls!

rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/is-that-mp...

YouTube video by CHOP Research Institute Annual Report: CHOP Scientists' 2025 Highlights with Struan Grant, PhD

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGvE...

How Dad’s Fitness May Be Packaged and Passed Down in Sperm RNA | Quanta Magazine Research into how a father’s choices — such as diet, exercise, stress, nicotine use — may transfer traits to his children has become impossible to ignore.

What a father eats, drinks, inhales, is stressed by or otherwise experiences in the weeks and months before he conceives a child might be encoded in molecules, packaged into his sperm cells and transmitted to his future kid.

As a belated Christmas 🎁 I’d like a 3X4’ poster of this 🎅
Also check out the article. They reference our work (and I’m quoted a couple times)!

We tend to emphasize the maternal role in development: an egg cell is enormous compared to a sperm cell, and a mother gestates the embryo. But a growing body of research suggests that sperm cells carry more than just genetic information. www.quantamagazine.org/how-dads-fit...

Intrigued by a long-standing conundrum in small RNA biology—how nuclear Argonaute proteins silence transposons when they *need* target transcription for their own recruitment—we studied the piRNA pathway.

And found a hidden RNA-decay axis from Piwi to the RNA exosome.

Happy to share two BioRxiv manuscripts from our lab. One on genetic Argonaute interaction and unexpected non-correlation between small RNAs and their targets:

doi.org/10.64898/202...

The second on IDR processing and IDR-mediated Argonaute loading control:

doi.org/10.64898/202...

Merry Xmas😊

I ❤️ your pic in front of the microinjection rig. One of the students in my lab asked “Does Ollie inject like you?”

How Dad’s Fitness May Be Packaged and Passed Down in Sperm RNA | Quanta Magazine Research into how a father’s choices — such as diet, exercise, stress, nicotine use — may transfer traits to his children has become impossible to ignore.

Hmmm ... sperm RNAs? Paternal effects? It's like an early Christmas present! Very nice article by Ivan Amato, including quotes and work from some excellent scientists like @colinconine.bsky.social ... and me, as well. ;)

www.quantamagazine.org/how-dads-fit...

How Dad’s Fitness May Be Packaged and Passed Down in Sperm RNA | Quanta Magazine Research into how a father’s choices, including diet, exercise, stress and nicotine use, may transfer traits to his children epigenetically has become impossible to ignore.

In a recent study, the fitness of a father mouse at the time of conception was found to have metabolic and mitochondrial benefits for his offspring. Similar signatures were found in the sperm of well-exercised human men. @ivanamato.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/how-dads-fit...

This is cool. When we hit epididymosomes with RNase we lose a lot of tDRs…

New review out! 🧬🪱 How do Argonautes bind the right small RNAs?

We synthesize how small RNA features, Argonaute properties, chaperones, and subcellular organization shape small RNA binding specificity.

rnajournal.cshlp.org/content/earl...

An RNA splicing system that excises DNA transposons from animal mRNAs - Nature A new type of mRNA splicing mechanism discovered in Caenorhabditis elegans that detects and removes inverted repeats also occurs in human cells, thereby providing another strategy to protect against t...

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