Carl de Boer
carldeboer.bsky.social
Carl de Boer
@carldeboer.bsky.social
Assistant Professor, UBC school of Biomedical Engineering. Trying to enable personalized medicine by solving gene regulatory code.
srsr(at)parl.gc.ca if you want to let the committee know your thoughts... Picard could have written the email I sent to them last weekend.
November 4, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
Please 🔁! #MASSIV will be held in Vancouver from January 19-22, 2026. 4-day meeting on #synbio x #tissueengineering.

Some trainee-focused events. >50 talks (10 from abstracts), posters, panel & publishing insights sessions.

www.massivconference.com

Abstract deadline: Nov 14
October 25, 2025 at 4:21 PM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
Please RP! A 4-day synbio and tissue engineering conference #MASSIV to transform biology and medicine together.

Couldn't list all amazing speakers, so please check out this 👉https://www.massivconference.com/

Poster due is Nov 7, but will be extended.

With @stemcellnetwork.ca and JST.
October 18, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
How much hands-on lab expertise gets lost? We developed a multimodal AI agent that turns videos into protocols and detects procedural errors. Making science accessible. Great collaboration with #Google.
Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
@patiskowronek.bsky.social explains👇
In labs, hands-on expertise is often lost because it's not written down. We leverage multimodal AI agents to capture & share expertise by analyzing video and speech to generate protocols, detect errors, and guide researchers. #AI #TeamMassSpec
📄 Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025... 1/🧵
Multimodal AI agents for capturing and sharing laboratory practice
We present a multimodal AI laboratory agent that captures and shares tacit experimental practice by linking written instructions with hands-on laboratory work through the analysis of video, speech, an...
doi.org
October 9, 2025 at 10:54 AM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
Which mutations rewire function of regulatory DNA?

Excited to share SEAM: Systematic Explanation of Attribtuion-based Mechanisms. SEAM is an explainable AI method that dissects cis-regulatory mechanisms learned by seq2fun genomic deep learning models.

Led by @EESetiz

1/N 🧵👇
October 9, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
Open rank tenure-track position in comp bio at the University of Montreal. Great environment, great position. @futurepislack.bsky.social

medecine.umontreal.ca/wp-content/u...
medecine.umontreal.ca
October 3, 2025 at 9:24 PM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
We have space for two postdoctoral fellows in the Taipale Lab at the @sangerinstitute.bsky.social. This is a core-funded open position! Come with your ideas and interests and we can develop a project together.

sanger.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Wellco...
Postdoctoral Fellow - Gene Regulation and Functional Genomics
Do you want to help us improve human health and understand life on Earth? Make your mark by shaping the future to enable or deliver life-changing science to solve some of humanity’s greatest challenge...
sanger.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com
September 25, 2025 at 10:58 AM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
Excited to finally present the lab's latest work in defining candidate causal genetic variants that drive autoimmune diseases and their effects on primary human T cell expression and function! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Genetic and epigenetic screens in primary human T cells link candidate causal autoimmune variants to T cell networks - Nature Genetics
Massively parallel reporter assay in primary human CD4+ T cells and bulk and single-cell CRISPR-interference screens identify candidate causal variants linked to autoimmune disease risk that modulate ...
www.nature.com
September 18, 2025 at 8:50 PM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
"We propose a model in which TF binding is not determined by individual binding sites, but rather by the sum of multiple, overlapping binding sites."

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Multiple overlapping binding sites determine transcription factor occupancy - Nature
A new method enables comprehensive screening and identification of low-affinity DNA binding sites for transcription factors, and reveals that nucleotides flanking high-affinity binding sites create ov...
www.nature.com
September 3, 2025 at 8:57 PM
New preprint from the lab 🎉 on the evolution of gene regulatory network complexity, where we tested whether sexual recombination promotes more complex GRNs using biochemically-inspired evolutionary simulations 🧐. Bluetorial from 1st author @chapelmadison.bsky.social 👇
September 4, 2025 at 12:37 AM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
Defence spending must include health spending too www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/2109fef...
Defence spending must include health spending too
Biotech investment can deliver on Canada’s NATO commitments, protect citizens and drive economic growth
www.theglobeandmail.com
September 2, 2025 at 1:24 PM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
Excited to share our new review on AI-driven protein design - from its origins to today’s breakthroughs, methods, potential, and challenges ahead !

www.cell.com/structure/fu...
Code to complex: AI-driven de novo binder design
In this review, Fox et al. discuss how artificial intelligence has transformed our ability to design new-to-nature proteins that bind target proteins with high affinity and specificity. The authors de...
www.cell.com
September 2, 2025 at 10:51 AM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
New preprint from the lab: Dr. Daniela James led an effort to improve the ChIP-exo protocol for high-res protein-DNA interactions. Particularly focused on optimizing for use in mammalian cells and making the protocol compatible with newer Illumina sequencers.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Optimized ChIP-exo for mammalian cells and patterned sequencing flow cells
By combining chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) with an exonuclease digestion of protein-bound DNA fragments, ChIP-exo characterizes genome-wide protein-DNA interactions at near base-pair resolution...
www.biorxiv.org
August 23, 2025 at 7:16 PM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
Thrilled to share the second half of my PhD work here!

We show how data on expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) relates to the structure of gene regulatory networks (GRN). Much of the GRN / eQTL picture is unmapped, but what we do have says a lot… (1/)

doi.org/10.1101/2025...
August 22, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
This is not a HiC map! Ever wondered if multiple enhancers get activated simultaneously? We measured chromatin accessibility on thousands of molecules by nanopore to create genome-wide co-accessibility maps. Proud of @mathias-boulanger.bsky.social @kasitc.bsky.social Biology in the thread👇
August 18, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
New paper from our lab on synthetic genome work in yeast is out - Iterative SCRaMbLE for Engineering Synthetic Genome Modules and Chromosomes. Exciting project led by Jane (Xinyu) Lu in our group, now online. t.co/0LuGwgAWlA
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-62356-y
t.co
August 11, 2025 at 12:36 PM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
To all post-docs: The Genome Biology dept ‪@embl.org
has an Independent faculty position. Fantastic place to set up your lab –great package: core funding, fantastic Ph.D. students, cutting edge core facilities & great colleagues. Closing date Sept 19th
embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...
Group Leader - Genome Biology Unit
Are you ready to lead groundbreaking research in Genome Biology? Join us at EMBL! We are seeking a motivated scientist to lead an independent research group addressing exciting and original biological...
embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com
July 30, 2025 at 1:41 PM
SOOOO MANY GENOMICS MODELSSSS! 😱 Often unclear which is best since they benchmark differently! In this preprint, we introduce GAME, a new framework that utilizes APIs to enable sustainable, uniform model evaluation so we can see which is actually best for each task. doi.org/10.1101/2025...
July 11, 2025 at 7:34 AM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
CloneSelect published in Nature Biotechnology
@natbiotech.nature.com. This retrospective clone isolation method using CRISPR base editors is a powerful tool in broad biology. A history of Soh in the Yachie lab. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A multi-kingdom genetic barcoding system for precise clone isolation - Nature Biotechnology
A barcoded CRISPR base editing system isolates target clones from complex mammalian, yeast and bacterial populations.
www.nature.com
May 21, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
🎉 This paper has been a long time and a labour of love (and hardship) for multiple group members, but, finally: we MPRA'ed 25k introgressed variants (Denisovan and Neanderthal) segregating at allele frequencies > 0.15 in humans today to evaluate their potential to regulate gene expression.
Mapping the gene regulatory landscape of archaic hominin introgression in modern Papuans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.04.652069v1
May 5, 2025 at 2:43 AM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
A tour de force study from Taipale&Yin labs. It expands the vocabulary of the Regulatory Code by adding 1131 TF:TF composite motifs that are different from the individual TF motifs. The new composite motifs are enriched in cell-type specific elements and active in vivo
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
DNA-guided transcription factor interactions extend human gene regulatory code - Nature
A large-scale analysis of DNA-bound transcription factors (TFs) shows how the presence of DNA markedly affects the landscape of TF interactions, and identifies composite motifs that are recognized by ...
www.nature.com
April 9, 2025 at 4:51 PM
⏰Abstract deadline for the Cascadia Advanced Genomic Technologies Meeting is April 30!⚠️ We're hoping this will be the first of many, catalyzing collaboration and leveraging our regional strength in advanced genomics technologies! See you there!
de-boer-lab.github.io/CAGT_meeting/
April 28, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
Join us for the 2025 SynBio7.0 conference in Toronto, June 1-3!

SynBio is Canada's largest academic synthetic biology conference.

More details on our website! synbio7.vercel.app
April 23, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Carl de Boer
Our latest work now online in Cell:

Rewriting regulatory DNA to dissect and reprogram gene expression

Our new method (Variant-EFFECTS) uses high-throughput prime editing + flow sorting + sequencing to precisely measure effects of noncoding variants on gene expression

Thread 👇
April 17, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Reminder: abstract deadline for the Cascadia Advanced Genomic Technologies Meeting is April 30! We're hoping this will be the first of many, catalyzing collaboration and leveraging our regional strength in advanced genomics technologies! Please spread the word!
de-boer-lab.github.io/CAGT_meeting/
April 17, 2025 at 4:12 PM