Honored to be a Spring 2025 Leakey Foundation Research Grant recipient. I’m deeply grateful to the @leakeyfoundation.org for supporting research in human origins, and to my supervisor @naelnadifkasri-lab.bsky.social for the invaluable guidance and encourargement. leakeyfoundation.org/introducing-...

Honored to share that we’ve been awarded a grant to advance personalized medicine for CHD2-related disorders. A heartfelt thank you to the @curechd2.bsky.social for supporting this important work. Grateful for the opportunity to contribute to meaningful progress in this field!

Today is CACNA1A Awareness Day! During my PhD (and now postdoc) I have been investigating this intriguing gene. Check out my latest publication:
academic.oup.com/brain/advanc...

How does gene regulation shape brain evolution? Our new preprint dives into this question in the context of mammalian cerebellum development! rb.gy/dbcxjz
Led by @ioansarr.bsky.social, @marisepp.bsky.social and @tyamadat.bsky.social, in collaboration with @steinaerts.bsky.social

Thank you, Dr. Boeckx, for highlighting our work ! It’s exciting to see the convergence of our findings, which suggest that lysosome function in neuronal development evolves across species in a spatiotemporal- and cell type-dependent manner, with human lysosomes playing unique roles.

I was struck by the importance of lysosomes in characterizing these human-specific features, @zhoujoeyyi.bsky.social;
this finding links well with our recent work on this pathway, CHD2 and 🧠 maturation (ping @naelnadifkasri-lab.bsky.social @ellylewerissa.bsky.social @olivieroleonardi.bsky.social)

The trait-specific timing of accelerated genomic change in the human lineage: Cell Genomics www.cell.com/cell-genomic...

Thrilled to share our preprint on how CHD2 dosage controls the autolysosomal pathway ♻️, shaping the neurodevelopmental pace 🧠 that sets us 👩🏽‍🔬 apart from our extinct relatives and great apes🐒: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... See 🧵below:

I am very happy to share our new paper on the genetics of some of the first modern humans who ever lived in Europe! We sequenced nuclear DNA from 13 specimens from Ranis in Germany, and found that they belonged to at least 6 individuals. www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/n)

Out today in @sciencemagazine, we've journeyed into our shared history with Neandertals by analyzing over 300 present-day and ancient modern humans, including 59 individuals who lived between 2,000 and 45,000 years ago.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Excited to present today at #cshl2024brain about the role of CHD2 dosage in neurodevelopment along disease and evolution. This is a result of a collaborative work with Oliviero Leonardi, Gesta Testa, @cedricboeckx.bsky.social and @naelnadifkasri-lab.bsky.social. See you at poster #111 🧠

Very happy @ellylewerissa.bsky.social & @naelnadifkasri-lab.bsky.social are presenting our collective effort (co-led by O. Leonardi from G. Testa’s lab) to capture the role of CHD2 dosage in neurodevelopment (for disease & evolution), using organoids + 2D neurons #cshl2024brain (Poster 111, today!)