Article published

In may 2026, our Our research work on using single-cell co-mapping to study early embryonic development was published

It’s well known that genes in different cell types are “bookmarked” on the DNA via active or silencing epigenetic modifications. But how does this cell-type specific bookmarking and gene activity take shape, when all our cells originally come from the same single stem cell?

Using developing zebrafish embryos as a model system, our team went on to catch this epigenetic landscaping happening “in action”, by applying an single-cell multiomics technology we call “whole-organism T-ChIC”.

• We found that the chromatin “syncs-up” with gene activity as cells mature during embryo development.
• We saw a spreading and de-methylation dynamics of repressive chromatin that associate with switching off of developmental genes.
• We found the chromatin signal is predictive of the activity of transcription factors (master regulators of cell identity).

Our datasets and tools are available open-source. I think there are many interesting results worth a deeper follow-up, which we and others could do to further understand embryonic development.

Lab member updates

In other news, our lab remains a dynamic place with incoming/outoping students in the lab between Jan and June 2026

• May 1, 2026: Michiel Borghuis joined our lab for his internship as part of the Master’s in Artificial Intelligence program.

• June 15, 2026: Mai Le will defend her master’s thesis in Systems Biology at Maastrict University.

All the best to Michiel and Mai.