The Micro-C AID paper is now online in Nature Genetics.

Using Micro-C to profile 3D genome structure after acute loss of cohesin, CTCF, WAPL, and YY1, we found that enhancer-promoter interactions are surprisingly robust to these perturbations, at least at short timescales.

This is consistent with enhancer-promoter interactions forming through a (micro)-compartmentalization mechanism as we also found in our recent Region-Capture Micro-C preprint.

We suggest a time-buffering model where CTCF and cohesin may be more important for establishing enhancer-promoter interactions than for maintaining them. Read the full paper at Nature Genetics.

Congratulations to Jamie on the publication of their preview in Molecular Cell.

Jamie previewed an interesting new article from Guo*, Al-Jibury*, Garcia-Millan*, ..., Pruessner, Merkenschlager Chromatin jets define the properties of cohesin-driven in vivo loop extrusion in Molecular Cell that reports the identification of "chromatin jets" - stripes orthogonal to the main diagonal in Hi-C maps, indicative of targeted loading of cohesin at sites.

Chromatin jets provide direct evidence of targeted cohesin loading and helps constrain possible extrusion parameters in vivo.

Check out Jamie's preview here.

And check out the article here.

We are excited to welcome Danuta Forbes to the lab.

Following Denise' retirement, Danuta joins us as our new administrator.

Danuta joins us from MIT's Climate and Sustainability Consortium and before that from Tufts University.

Welcome Danuta!

We are excited to welcome Christos Katsifis to the lab!

Christos is joining us as a Technical Associate having recently graduated from Magdalen College, University of Oxford with an MA degree in the Biological Sciences.

Christos will be working with Michele on understanding the dynamic mechanisms of gene regulation during neuronal differentiation and how this goes awry in FOXG1 Syndrome.

We are also sad to say goodbye to Denise MacPhail, our administrative assistant who is retiring after thirty-some years of work at MIT. Happy retirement, Denise!

Congratulations to Domenic on the publication of his News & Views article in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.

Domenic wrote about an exciting new paper Condensin-driven loop extrusion on supercoiled DNA from Eugene Kim, Cees Dekker and co-workers on how loop extruding condensin complexes navigate supercoiled DNA.

We are very sad to say goodbye to Emma and Asmita.

Asmita joined the lab in Summer 2020 as the first Technical Associate and helped get the lab set up and organized. Asmita was a key contributer to the Fbn2 project on the dynamics of DNA looping and wrote a protocol on Single-Particle Tracking. Asmita is leaving this August and going to graduate school at Yale.

Emma joined the lab in Summer 2021 from Aviv Regev's group at the Broad Institute. Emma also kept the lab in order and led a project on developing new genome-editing methods for fluorescently labeling DNA loci using PRIME editing and derivatives. Emma has just left and is going to graduate school at Stanford.

We are very sad to see you go and wish you all the best in graduate school!