Amazing! Congratulations!

Congratulations! Great news!! Looking forward to implementing this approach in other systems and upcoming results from our collaboration!

Wait…meaning you are where?😄

This work was only possible thanks to a fantastic collaboration with Bassem Al-Sady, Ilya Finkelstein, Junko Kanoh, and Mo Motamedi. 🙌
We’re also deeply grateful for all the insightful feedback from the community at #Pombe2025 and support from @jlugiessen.bsky.social
@lmumuenchen.bsky.social
(7/n)

Together, these findings reframe subtelomeric heterochromatin as a dynamic, modular system rather than a uniform domain. They highlight how genome structure and epigenetic diversity intersect at chromosome ends, with implications from yeast to humans. (6/n)

We also discovered that subtelomeric silencing has distinct genetic requirements, more similar to heterochromatin formed in euchromatic contexts. Strikingly, even within a single subtelomere, different loci depend on different sets of factors. (5/n)

#Silencing behaviors were equally diverse. Some loci showed stable recovery after perturbation, others switched ON <-> OFF in a metastable manner, while fragile sites lost repression irreversibly. Structural variation of chromosomal arms further shaped these #epigenetic outcomes. (4/n)

Our results reveal that subtelomeric heterochromatin is not one continuous spreading domain but instead organized into modular subdomains. Telomere-proximal regions rely on #RNAi and #shelterin, while distal regions nucleate through #cryptic RNA-based sites. (3/n)

To overcome these challenges, we engineered strains carrying a single subtelomere and inserted #single-cell reporters at defined positions. This allowed us to follow silencing dynamics in unprecedented detail across multiple generations. (2/n)

We set out to understand how subtelomeric #heterochromatin is organized in #Spombe. Subtelomeres are repetitive, variable, and poorly mapped, yet play essential roles in protecting chromosome ends and regulating genome function. (1/n)

Congrats to this impressive work!