Kero Guynes

I’m thrilled to share that my PhD work has been just published in Cell. After a long and bumpy ride, we uncovered the core function of nuclear speckles -splicing of GC-levelled exons- and traced the evolution of this gene architecture and condensates themselves to amniotes.

Decoding the molecular logic of rapidly evolving ZAD zinc finger proteins in Drosophila Identification of ZAD-ZnF genes as key regulators of genome organization during Drosophila embryogenesis.

Diving into evolutionary biology! What is the origin of the most abundant class of insect transcription factors, ZAD-ZnFs? We suggest that they evolved from ancestral insulator-binding proteins that control 3D genome topology.

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

Giant DNA viruses encode a hallmark translation initiation complex of eukaryotic life Giant DNA viruses encode a cap-binding complex homologous to eIF4F, the defining translation-initiation complex of eukaryotes. The viral cap-binding complex is required for viral protein synthesis and...

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Super cool work!

Our most recent work on the “function and evolution” of #nuclear-speckles is now online at Cell @cp-cell.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
Read the thread👇 for the highlights of our findings.

Happy to share scHiCAR, an ultra-high throughout (millions of cells), low cost (5 cents/cell including NGS), and trimodal platform for integrated single-cell level analysis of mRNA, open chromatin, and 5-kb resolution looping with ground-truth data the same individual cell.

Massively parallel reporter assays: from barcodes to biology Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 10 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-00944-4In this Journal Club, Fumitaka Inoue discusses a 2009 paper by Patwardhan et al. that introduced a massively parallel saturation-mutagenesis assay that leverages high-throughput DNA synthesis and sequencing to quantify the effects of single-nucleotide changes on regulatory element activity.

New online! Massively parallel reporter assays: from barcodes to biology

Why Seeing Still Matters in Biology - the Node or, Why all biologists needs data visualization Biology probes form and function of Life. Form is easy to grasp: cells under a microscope, subcellular

Why Seeing Still Matters in Biology

@helenajambor.bsky.social addresses why all biologists need data visualisation. Read and discuss this topic on the Node. ⬇️

#DataVis #BioVis

thenode.biologists.com/why-seeing-s...

Regulation of gene expression by alternative polyadenylation in health and disease Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 15 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-025-00928-wAlternative 3′-end processing of nascent RNA, known as alternative polyadenylation (APA), increases transcript diversity and augments post-transcriptional modulation of gene expression. APA profiles are highly dynamic in response to cell growth, differentiation and extracellular cues, and dysregulated APA is a hallmark of human diseases.

FYI: New online! Regulation of gene expression by alternative polyadenylation in health and disease

Another domain boundary factor identified

Loss of SETDB1-mediated H3K9me3 in human neural progenitor cells leads to transcriptional activation of L1 retrotransposons Abstract. Heterochromatin is characterized by an inaccessibility to the transcriptional machinery and is associated with the histone mark H3K9me3. However,

New paper from my lab out in NAR. We found that young L1 elements are controlled by SETDB1 and H3K9me3 in human neural progenitor cells via a mechanism independent of HUSH and TRIM28/KZNFs.

academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

The printed version lives on my desk. Wonderfully written!

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/...

orthogene: a Bioconductor package to easily map genes within and across hundreds of species https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.17.700094v1

The (Yoav) Voichek lab has opened its gates at the Weizmann Institute, and is actively recruiting students and researchers at all levels - come explore gene regulation and computational genomics in a fun, friendly sprouting lab 🤗🥼⚗️🧪
www.weizmann.ac.il/plants/voichek

Looking forward to diving into this one

Programmed ‘DNA splicing’ removes transposons from genes Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology - A study that showed that programmed DNA elimination in somatic genomes of ciliates involves excision of intrusive, transposon-derived sequences from genes.

Happy to begin the year with the publication of a Journal Club article - Programmed ‘DNA splicing’ removes transposons from genes.
rdcu.be/eXBym

Activator-promoter compatibility in mammals: a CpG-Island-specific co-activator directly bridges transcription factors to TFIID Transcription from CpG island (CGI) promoters controls the expression of two-thirds of mammalian genes, yet despite their prevalence, it remains unknown whether CGI-specific co-activators with intrins...

Activator-promoter compatibility in mammals - Hcfc1 is a key and intrinsically CGI-promoter-specific co-activator that cannot activate non-CGI promoters. Lead by @nemcko.bsky.social & Kevin Sabath in collab. with @plaschkalab.bsky.social @impvienna.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... (1/2)

The changing roles of Escherichia coli - Nature Microbiology Richard Lenski traces the legacy of Escherichia coli and how science is evolving to use this model organism in new ways.

„E. coli is a star in our understanding because, like science, it keeps on evolving”.

Lovely perspective!

🎄 Day 20 of the 24 Days of Development ✨🔬 
Light up your RNA like a Christmas tree with these techniques! 🎄This review showcases methods to track RNA dynamics from CRISPR tools to fluorescent aptamers🔬💡https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2025.07.011

TaoChongBao: A Large-Scale Caenorhabditis elegans Mutagenesis and Missense Variant Database Bridging Worm and Human Genomes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.03.692224v1

RNA decay via the nuclear exosome is essential for piwi-mediated transposon silencing https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.16.694471v1

Massive data integration efforts

Retroviral insertions contributed to the divergence of human and chimpanzee brains Over the past 5 to 7 million years, humans and chimpanzees have diverged in brain size, structural complexity, and cognitive abilities despite high conservation of protein-coding genes. Notably, the e...

New preprint from our lab: ‘Retroviral insertions contributed to the divergence of human and chimpanzee brains’. Very proud of this piece which took almost a decade to finish.

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

Age-specific genomic and transcriptomic variation reveals limited evidence for cis-regulatory interactions modulating aging in Saccharomyces cerevisiae https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.12.689579v1

ColabCuraTE: an easy-to-use, web-based pipeline for the manual curation of transposable elements - Mobile DNA Background Transposable elements (TEs) are widespread mobile DNA sequences that shape genome structure, function, and evolution. Although automated tools exist for the de novo identification and class...

WOW! Very promising new tool to facilitate collaborative manual curation of TEs link.springer.com/article/10.1...

CUT&ID for simultaneous profiling of protein-DNA and protein-protein interactions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.11.693662v1

Congratulations, Alex. More cool critter stuff on the horizon! 🥳

Are you planning to perform single-copy insertions in C. elegans???
Check out our first lab paper!! 🥳
Our *Universal SKI System* uses just one plasmid that can be inserted into any chromosome! Easy peasy!
#Celegans #CRISPR #worms #research #science #techniques

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

Talking about death can feel hard; but it’s essential. This #GriefAwarenessWeek, learn how Dr Libby Sallnow (@uclpsychiatry.bsky.social) is helping shape a future where dying well is part of living well.
www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-scienc...