Congratulations to Dr @baalberti.bsky.social !! 🎉
And many thanks to his jury members @randersson.bsky.social @arnausebe.bsky.social @olivier-gandrillon.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy Marie Sémon Anouck Necsulea and co-supervizor @paulvilloutreix.bsky.social

While the "generic" hsp70 core promoter can fully respond to E3's input, the expression of the reporter is restricted when combined with the minimal promoter of each of E3's target genes. This minimal promoter includes a ~100bp region upstream of the core promoter.

In fact, we realized that E3 is a pleiotropic enhancer that is driving the expression of at least 3 other genes, each expressed in a very different spatio-temporal context.

However, to our surprise, we realized that in reporter assays, the activity of E3 is actually much more complex! The enhancer seemed to be active in tissues and stages when twist is not expressed, including non-mesodermal tissues!

Various hypotheses suggested that specificity might have to do with 3D genome organization, the sequence of the core promoter, etc...
We now provide evidence that the answer instead lies upstream of the core promoter, in the promoter-proximal region!

📢 We are recruiting!
Several projects are available and can be tailored to the candidate's profile. Most include confocal imaging/spatial OMICs technologies.
Please share and RT 🙏

Thanks @evodevogenomeub.bsky.social @criscanestro.bsky.social for having us and showing us all the secrets of beautiful Oikopleura!! 😍

Lovely day at @biom-banyuls.bsky.social
So much exciting science on cool marine species!

Just an example to showcase the power of our method:
we could reconstruct the activity pattern of the h_stripe1 enhancer based on the sequencing of our reporter construct in only 9 cells!

We combined the principle of MPRAs with single-cell transcriptomics and spatial reconstruction using optimal transport to reconstruct virtual maps of enhancer activity in stage 6 Drosophila embryos.
Our method presents 2 key innovations: