Having your paper for our JC ;-)

Phew! Oxygen is for above 5000, bru. But pics are pretty pretty

We had a nice experience with www.flyorf-injection.ch

It seems both mechanisms involved. We see piRNA pathway, and apparently it gets piRNAs directly from ribosomal locus (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...). And we also see a mysterious regulation at the promoter (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35037046/). So interesting how much it’s conserved!

Great idea and amazing to see R2 doing its job very well! I studied before how rRNA gene copies with R2 get inactivated in insects. Is it possible that rDNA can be sensitive to the R2-mediated intrusions as well? And after some generations start switching off them?

Using PRO-seq and CUT&Tag, we found that CBP activates zygotic genes in two steps:
- It helps recruit RNA Pol II to promoters without requiring catalytic activity.
- Its catalytic acetyltransferase function then triggers pause release.

We show that transcription factor Zelda is required for CBP recruitment, but CBP is dispensable for Zelda pioneer factor function. Instead, CBP catalytic activity is essential for zygotic genome activation and successful gastrulation.

This was a fantastic collaboration with the Melissa Harrison lab @harrisonflylab.bsky.social, where we use powerful Drosophila tools: optogenetic inactivation, full CBP degradation (DeGrad), and classic catalytic-dead mutants, to investigate the mechanism of gene activation during development.

The CBP project will be out in Molecular Cell very soon—don’t miss it if you're into ZGA, transcription regulation, and histone acetyltransferases! The second project is a great collaboration with @mardzix.bsky.social and part of the @scentinel.bsky.social consortium #epigenetics #chromatin #devbio