Mathi Thiruppathy
mathithiru.bsky.social
Mathi Thiruppathy
@mathithiru.bsky.social
Reposted by Mathi Thiruppathy
I think for me the most compelling answer for "why fund basic research?" (and the one most relevant to the people doing the work) is that humans are curious and finding stuff out makes us happy and fulfilled. Science is a thing humans like. Life would be more dull and sad if we didn't do it.

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October 3, 2025 at 7:32 PM
🤯
September 4, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Reposted by Mathi Thiruppathy
Our paper describing the Range Extender element which is required and sufficient for long-range enhancer activation at the Shh locus is now available at @nature.com. Congrats to @gracebower.bsky.social who led the study. Below is a brief summary of the main findings www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/
Range extender mediates long-distance enhancer activity - Nature
The REX element is associated with long-range enhancer–promoter interactions.
www.nature.com
July 2, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by Mathi Thiruppathy
How do non-coding variants in enhancers lead to disease? Happy to share our recent work, led by @ewholling.bsky.social, in which we discovered that poised chromatin sensitizes enhancers to aberrant activation by non-coding mutations, contributing to disease. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/
June 23, 2025 at 12:57 PM
😍 So much fascinating development in this system. These images and movies do justice to how beautiful and complex fish gills are.
1)
Branching morphogenesis is fundamental to animal development, shaping complex organs like lungs, kidneys, and vascular networks. Gills are another highly branched organ. Yet, the developmental processes behind gill formation in zebrafish remain poorly understood.

#zebrafish #gills #microscopy
June 13, 2025 at 8:57 PM
Reposted by Mathi Thiruppathy
-A Gill's Secret Sidekick -
A small, often-overlooked organ tucked behind the eye.
In zebrafish, the pseudobranch arises from mandibular arch mesenchyme — the same region that forms jaws — and shares gene expression and developmental programs with true gills.

🔬 #FluorescenceFriday #zebrafish
April 25, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Reposted by Mathi Thiruppathy
Gills just wanna have #FluorescenceFriday 🎵

Phalloidin reveals the beauty of the filament's distal tip in cleared gills of adult 🦓🐟

#microscopy #devbio #sciart
April 11, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Gorgeous gills. 😍
2/2
Starting to study their development nearly 3 years ago, I felt like a pioneer in an area that's barely explored. I chose this image because it captures the complex architecture. It's crazy how all of this is essential for such a small 🐟 to breathe.
This is what truly got me hooked on gills 🤓
March 12, 2025 at 1:49 AM
Really appreciated this opportunity from @the-node.bsky.social to write about the amazing journey I got to be on for 6 years and the people I met on the way.

Every day I feel fortunate to live in and work for a society that chooses to be curious. Now more than ever I hope it continues to do so. ✨
March 7, 2025 at 5:45 PM
Reposted by Mathi Thiruppathy
"Imagine a DAPI-like stain, but for the extracellular matrix." That's basically how this work was pitched to me by Kayvon and Antonio a year or so ago. Now the final product really delivers. Read about their versatile label for ECM in living tissues here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
February 6, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Reposted by Mathi Thiruppathy
Sox10 is required for systemic initiation of bone mineralization

Read this #OpenAccess Research Article by Stefani Gjorcheska, Lindsey Barske & co. @cincyresearch.bsky.social :
https://journals.biologists.com/dev/article/152/2/dev204357/365396/Sox10-is-required-for-systemic-initiation-of-bone
January 22, 2025 at 9:51 AM
Reposted by Mathi Thiruppathy
Massively parallel reporter assays (MPRAs) testing >680,000 sequences combined with machine learning to improve regulatory element & variant effect prediction. Amazing work by @vagar.bsky.social, Fumitaka Inoue, @jshendure.bsky.social and many others as part of ENCODE.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Massively parallel characterization of transcriptional regulatory elements - Nature
Lentivirus-based reporter assays for 680,000 regulatory sequences from three cell lines coupled to machine-learning models lead to insights into the grammar of cis-regulatory elements.
www.nature.com
January 15, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Excited to share this story from my PhD revealing the surprising legacy of our gill-bearing ancestry in the form of our cartilaginous outer ears, summarized in this series of Tweets.
The outer ear is a mammalian innovation but where did it come from? In our study in Nature, Mathi Thiruppathy and colleagues find that the outer ear arose from modification of an ancestral gill program first originating in marine invertebrates. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/n
Repurposing of a gill gene regulatory program for outer ear evolution - Nature
Nature - Repurposing of a gill gene regulatory program for outer ear evolution
www.nature.com
January 9, 2025 at 7:12 PM