Thanks Kristeli!!!

Thank you Kero! 🤗

Thanks so much Max! :)

Thanks Sergio! Yes, nice to see that it’s shared across American and Australian marsupials 🤩

Thanks Gareth! :)

8/ This has been an extremely collaborative project and would not have been possible without our excellent co-authors and research facilities! @garvaninstitute.bsky.social @unswbabs.bsky.social 🤩🧬🦘

7/ Our study offers the first detailed exploration of developmental 5mC dynamics in an Australian marsupial, expanding our knowledge on the diversification of embryonic gene regulation across placental mammals, and how these processes contribute to the evolution of unique developmental strategies.

6/ Generation and analysis of T2T, gap-free sex chromosomes also identified the previously unannotated lncRNA Rsx, responsible for silencing the paternal X chromosome, as well as global hypomethylation of the inactive X in females, except for genes that escape inactivation.

5/ We found that the dunnart shows extensive DNA hypomethylation in the blastocyst, but this 5mC loss occurs in the trophectoderm only. While the use of 5mC erasure differs between eutherians and marsupials, 5mC erasure in the TE is ancestral to therians and may support placental development.

4/ In collaboration with Ira Deveson’s lab @garvaninstitute.bsky.social, we generated a near-complete, telomere-to-telomere genome assembly. This improved genome provided a robust reference to explore embryonic 5mC using EM-seq and scBS-seq.

3/ Given their unique evolutionary position, marsupials can help us understand whether 5mC erasure is unique to eutherian mammals, and how this relates to placental evolution. The fat-tailed dunnart, an Australian marsupial, has recently emerged as a model species for comparative dev bio.

2/ Eutherian mammals, like mice and humans, undergo global 5mC erasure in embryonic and extraembryonic lineages. While embryonic 5mC is restored after implantation, trophectoderm derivatives remain lowly methylated, suggesting 5mC loss is functionally linked to placental evolution in mammals.

Big thanks to our amazing committee @pmasamsetti.bsky.social, @giuliaxin.bsky.social, @osvaldoics.bsky.social, @heisler-lab.bsky.social, James Burchfield, Peter Su, Gregory Redpath, Jonathan Scavuzzo, Nicole Green and Jacqueline Tearle