Tetsuya Yamada

Figure 1.(A) Classical gel electrophoresis experiments showing mono-, di-, tri-, tetra-, and further multinucleosome bands upon chromatin digestion. (B) The nucleosome repeat length (NRL) is defined as the genomic distance between the centres of two neighbouring nucleosomes.

Figure 2.Nucleosome mapping using MNase-seq versus ATAC-seq. (A) In MNase-seq, nucleosomes in both open and tightly packed genomic regions are accessible to digestion. MNase preferentially cleaves DNA between nucleosomes and digests DNA until it encounters a histone octamer, which provides a footprint of nucleosome-protected DNA regions. (B) Bulk MNase-seq results in averaged maps across millions of cells, effectively capturing all possible nucleosome positioning configurations. (C) Single-cell MNase-seq (scMNase-seq) results in a noisier and sparser signal. The resulting footprints still represent nucleosome-protected regions, but not all nucleosomes are represented. (D) In ATAC-seq, open regions can be accessed by the enzyme Tn5 transposase, which can insert primers in regions free from the binding of nucleosomes and transcription factors (TFs). (E) For open chromatin regions, nucleosome maps can be obtained from ATAC-seq similar to MNase-seq. (F) Closed, tightly packed chromatin regions may be less represented in ATAC-seq nucleosome maps.

Figure 5.Molecular mechanisms affecting nucleosome spacing. (A) Linker histones H1 and nonhistone chromatin proteins which compete with H1s and modulate nucleosome spacing through structural and electrostatic mechanisms. (B) Chromatin remodellers actively reposition nucleosomes following context-dependent rules. (C) Cell state-dependent chromatin boundaries formed by CTCF and other structural proteins, as well as associated recruitment of chromatin remodellers which space nucleosomes. (D) Gene activity associated with remodeller action and RNA polymerases transcribing through the nucleosomes, leading to smaller distances between nucleosomes in regulatory regions and gene bodies. (E) DNA sequence repeats of different types.

Figure 6. Examples of NRL changes in biological systems. (A) Cell differentiation leads to NRL changes between different cell types, e.g. mouse dorsal root ganglia neurons (NRL ∼165 bp) versus cortical astrocytes (NRL ∼183 bp) [175]. Schematic cell shapes are adapted from an image created in BioRender (https://BioRender.com/89trj2t). (B) Paired normal versus tumour breast tissues show NRL shortening in cancer (figure adapted from [36] under the CC BY 4.0 licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)). (C) Nucleosome positioning derived from cfDNA of human volunteers shows NRL increase with age (figure reprinted from [79] under the CC BY 4.0 licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)).

Nucleosome aficionados! Our new review "Nucleosome spacing across cell types, diseases, and ages" is out in NAR: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

A huge effort to pull together what we’ve learned about nucleosome spacing in many systems. Enjoy!
@milena-bikova.bsky.social @chrsclrksn.bsky.social

The role of KRAB zinc-finger proteins in expanding the domestication potential of transposable elements - Nature Genetics This Perspective explores the co-evolution of transposable elements and KRAB zinc-finger proteins in relation to their integration into human gene regulatory networks, highlighting their potential eff...

Find our latest Perspective article in Nature Genetics on "The role of KRAB zinc-finger proteins in expanding the domestication potential of transposable elements" at www.nature.com/articles/s41..., with implications for the future of research on the cause of human disease.

Convergent and lineage-specific genomic changes shape adaptations in sugar-consuming birds High-sugar diets cause human metabolic diseases, yet several bird lineages convergently adapted to feeding on sugar-rich nectar or fruits. We investigated the underlying molecular mechanisms in hummin...

Happy to share that our work with Ekaterina Osipova, @maggiemcko.bsky.social, Tim Sackton, Maude Baldwin & fantastic collaborators on convergent and lineage-specific genomic adaptations in sugar-feeding birds is published in Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/.... While high sugar intake ...

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.

The molecular evolution of vertebrate organs Nature Ecology & Evolution - This Review discusses recent advances in the molecular evolution of vertebrate organs, including rates of evolution of organs and cell types, molecular mechanisms...

Our internal organs are evolutionary marvels. New technologies are transforming our understanding of the evolution of vertebrate organs. You can find more by reading here:
rdcu.be/e5EgU
#EvoBio #EvoDevo 🐟🦎🐢🦇🐊🦜

Have you ever wondered 🤔... Does phenotypic variance respond to environmental perturbation? Does it have a genetic basis? Are mean and variance regulating loci exposed to different selection pressures? These and more questions are explored in our new preprint 🔥

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

From our new paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social: www.cell.com/current-biol... w/ @neurofishh.bsky.social @gkafetzis.bsky.social @denilsson.bsky.social

Looking across animals, the vertebrate eye is an obvious outlier. Why is it so different that other highly visual animals?

Interested in the evo-devo of the mammalian cerebellum? This review is a must-read!

Really happy to have contributed to this work, led by @marisepp.bsky.social , together with @ioansarr.bsky.social .

Brain with puzzle overlay to show that our study provides missing pieces of the puzzle of human brain development by delivering the most comprehensive picture of hindbrain development to date. We have strived to go beyond just another multi-omics atlas to gain deep insights by: 1. Meticulously annotating cell clusters 2. Extracting regulatory programs in terms of coordinated gene sets and accessible regulatory elements 3. Using deep learning to identify regulatory syntax 4. Resolving context-specific TF activity

Excited to share our preprint on our new multi-omic atlas of human hindbrain development. Led by postdoc Piyush Joshi, in collaboration with @kaessmannlab.bsky.social and Pfister labs, our atlas represents the first comprehensive view of human hindbrain development. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Exciting Postdoc Opportunities – Alliance Interinstitutional Program
**Deadline:** March 31, 2026 (5:00 pm CEST)
🔗 Two shared positions: www.syn-gen.de/alliance-pos...
🔗 Full call & application info:: www.health-life-sciences.de/opportunitie...

Introducing The Structural History of Eukarya (SHE): The first proteome-scale phylogeny constructed entirely from 3D structure.
We computed 300 trillion alignments across 1,542 species to map the tree of life. 🧵👇 (1/5)

The new updates for Charles McAnany’s preprint “Positional Interpretation of Cis-Regulatory Code and Nucleosome Organization with Deep Learning Models” (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...) are up!

We introduce PISA, a tool to visualize the cis-regulatory code. See a recap below:

Oriented cell divisions induce basal progenitors and regulate neural expansion across tissues and species A fundamental role for division orientation in progenitor output driving cortical and retinal growth is revealed.

Happy to announce that our latest paper is now out! Have you ever wondered how neural tissues control their size? In this paper, we show that cell division orientation is critical in both the cortex and retina. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Tissue-specific restriction of transposon-derived regulatory elements safeguards cell-type identity Milovanović et al. uncover a mechanism by which KZFPs restrict the activity of transposon-derived cis-regulatory elements to safeguard cardiomyocyte functionality. This work extends the classical TE-K...

It is finally out! If you are interested in TE-derived CREs, and newly described, but evolutionary old KZFP-TE mechanistic modalities, read it at www.cell.com/cell-reports....
Thankful to everyone who took part in this work, namely @orpsf.bsky.social and other @trono-lab.bsky.social members. 🫀🧬✨

A genome language model for mapping DNA replication origins

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A genome language model for mapping DNA replication origins [new]
predicts specific DNA replication origin sequences by learning rich sequence features beyond known motifs, enabling fast genome-wide mapping across vertebrates.

I've started my own lab 🎉
PhD/postdoc positions available - reach out if curious about cerebellum evo-devo and autism spectrum disorders.

We’re based at Uni Tartu, Institute of Genomics (home to Estonian Biobank), and funded by @simonsfoundation.org @embo.org, and the Estonian Research Council.

Very happy to see this work finally published!

I am truly grateful to all the collaborators who made this work possible, especially @ioansarr.bsky.social, @marisepp.bsky.social, and @kaessmannlab.bsky.social. It’s been a pleasure working with you!

Calling all OrthoFinder users!

We’ve just released GLADE, a tool to infer gene gains, losses, duplications, and ancestral genomes across a phylogeny.

GLADE runs directly on OrthoFinder results.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
github.com/lauriebelch/...

(1/10)

Remodeling of XIST regulatory landscape during primate evolution How gene regulation strategies rapidly evolve across short evolutionary timescales is explored.

Our paper on the evolution of XIST regulatory network in primates is now published in Science Advances! Check out the paper www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... or a digest of our findings emmanuelczt.github.io/posts/2026/0... A short 🧵 of our main findings 👇

AlphaGenome is out in @nature.com today along with model weights! 🧬

📄 Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

💻 Weights: github.com/google-deepm...

Getting here wasn’t a straight path. We discussed the story behind the model, paper & API in the following roundtable: youtu.be/V8lhUqKqzUc

Dissecting gene regulatory networks governing human cortical cell fate - Nature Systematic screening of transcription factors reveals conserved mechanisms governing cortical radial glia lineage progression across primates and provides a framework for functional dissecti...

1/ Our new study, led by Jingwen Ding, examines the role of transcription factors during human neurogenesis to identify gene regulatory networks influencing cell fate, maturation, and subtype specification
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It’s out! 🐟 We compared three regeneration superstars—axolotl, zebrafish, and Polypterus—to ask how animals regrow limbs and fins. We find shared core processes, and other programs fine-tuned by evolution in surprising, lineage-specific ways. tinyurl.com/mpftkn7y

A competition model of multilineage priming and cell-fate decisions In development, cells navigate highly complex gene-regulatory landscapes to make fate choices. Steinschaden et al. synthesize concepts of multilineage priming, microheterogeneity, and collective multi...

Our review “A competition model of multilineage priming and cell-fate decisions” is out: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

We are thrilled to share our new pre-print: “System-wide extraction of cis-regulatory rules from sequence-to-function models in human neural development”. S2F-deeplearning models can accurately encode enhancers, yet decoding these models into human-interpretable rules remains a major challenge.

Pervasive cis-regulatory co-option of a transposable element family reinforces cell identity across the mouse immune system Transposable elements (TEs) make up about half of the human and mouse genomes and play important regulatory roles in immune responses. However, the cis -regulatory contribution of TEs to immune cell d...

New Year, New Paper!🎊

Pervasive cis-regulatory co-option of a transposable element family reinforces cell identity across the mouse immune system
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Centerpiece of Jason Chobirko's PhD, talented PhD student co-mentored by Andrew Grimson & me. Really excited about it!🧵

Deep conservation of cis-regulatory elements and chromatin organization in echinoderms uncover ancestral regulatory features of animal genomes Nature Ecology & Evolution - Analysis of the 3D chromatin architecture and cis-regulatory elements in a sea urchin and a sea star reveals mechanisms of 3D chromatin organization in echinoderms...

Our work on the evolution of the regulatory genome of echinoderms is now out in @natecoevo.nature.com. Led by my former PhD Marta Magri, Danila Voronov & Saoirse Foley. Great collaboration of Arnone, Hinman & Maeso labs, started long time ago with our missed José Luis Gomez-Skarmeta: rdcu.be/eXX8l

DNA sequence quantitatively encodes CTCF-binding affinity at genome scale https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.05.696797v1

Cross-species insights into placental evolution and diseases at the single-cell resolution https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.26.696571v1

Decoding cnidarian cell type gene regulation - Nature Ecology & Evolution This study reconstructs the gene regulatory networks that define cell types in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis, providing a valuable resource for comparative regulatory genomics and the evoluti...

Excited to share the final version of our study on Nematostella cell type regulatory programs. Part of our @erc.europa.eu StG project, this was a challenging 5-year effort extraodinarily led by @aelek.bsky.social and @martaig.bsky.social.

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