3. Conserved G4s are enriched and hypomethylated in key regulatory regions (promoters, enhancers, UTRs, replication origins & CpG islands)
4. Showed that G4s evolve in a clock-like fashion, reflecting primate divergence

🔍 Key highlights:
1. Annotated up to 5–21% more G-quadruplexes (G4s) using complete telomere-to-telomere (T2T) genomes of six great ape species
2. Identified both conserved and species-specific G4s—some shared across all apes, others unique to lineages

🙌 Grateful beyond words to my advisor Kateryna Makova for her invaluable mentorship, and to Francesca, whose statistical insights shaped this work in crucial ways. Here’s to the unseen structures that shape genomes—and the amazing people who helped me understand the structures a little better.

This paper:
(1) provides a complete catalog of G4s in completely sequenced great ape genomes;
(2) shows enrichment and suggest folding of G4s shared across apes in functionally important regions;
(3) identifies many species-specific G4s with potential roles in adaptation and genome expansion.