A dream come true 😭❤️. My first-author paper is now out in @Nature .

RT @ArnauSebe: We offer three new positions to join BCA @MooreFound:.1. A full-stack developer to work on the BCA database with @emblebi.2.….

Truly excited to finally see this out! 👏🏻. Jorge's lab is where I started my scientific career, so this one's quite special. What a pleasure to have had a (very) small contribution to this article. Must read if you care about mechanosensing! 👀💡. Congrats to the whole team! 🎉.

RT @AlegreCebollada: 🎉🎉.Very happy that our paper “Cell response to extracellular matrix viscous energy dissipation outweighs high-rigidity….

RT @a_pposada: We added Owenia fusiformis to our comparisons –a protostome thanks to which we can assess how much the deuterostome LCA chan….

RT @a_pposada: I am very happy to announce that our work on hemichordate gene expression and chromatin accessibility dynamics is now publis….

RT @k_guynes: Another piece of work from my very talented friend - glad to have been part of this ☺️.

RT @Chema_MD: New paper from the lab! 🎉 Incredible effort by @fmmartinz to kick-start our work into annelid 🪱 histones and their regulatory….

Linking the pre-print here again! 👇🏻.

I’m incredibly grateful to all those who helped get this story out. Firstly, to @Chema_MD and @pauljhurd for their guidance and mentorship, but also to @Rory_Donnellan7, @k_guynes, @Allan_littlecar, @Dr_Joby_Cole and Mark for their hard work 💪🙌. Thank you, truly! 🙏.

And by doing so, we have also set the ground work to explore hPTM changes further throughout annelid development. This will definitely shed light into how this regulatory layer contributes to phenotypic evolution in annelids, and in animals in general 🧬🪱🐮🪰 So. stay tuned!.

Overall, we present a first-of-its-kind analysis of histone-based epigenetics in a non-model animal phylum, which has helped us get some more insights into the evolution of this process 🐒➡👨🧬.

Others like the differences in H3K23ac and H3K27ac could be the result of the shift in expression timing of five different HAT genes, namely TIP60, ELP3, CLOCK, CSRP2BP and CREBBP/p300 💡.

Using quantitative mass spec 📊 we uncovered distinct adult hPTM landscapes in O. fusiformis and C. teleta. Some of the differences in hPTMs, such as H3K56me1 and H3K56me2/3, correlate with the presence/absence of the associated HMEs, i.e. KMT1A/B (SUV39H1/2) and KMT1D (EHMT2)

Many HMEs were shifted in expression timing between species with feeding and non-feeding larvae. Most strikingly, just as we had seen in our previous paper for Hox genes, there was a large-scale acceleration of HMEs between the indirect developers and the direct developer 🏃‍♂️⏰

Coming back to our initial hypothesis! . We clustered the developmental transcriptomes of the 3 species and classified all genes in early (cleavage) and late development (post-cleavage) genes 🗂️. This way, we could investigate which HME genes were shifted in expression timing ⌛️.

The arginine methyltransferase PRMT6 showed a large expansion in Dimorphilus gyrociliatus. Its orthologues, while expressed, had unexpected domain fusions and amino acid changes in critical substrate- and cofactor-binding residues, that likely made them catalytically dead 😐🤨

We also wondered whether there were differences in the HMEs involved in histone methylation and acetylation. Indeed, HMEs show a more complex evolution pattern, with lineage-specific expansions and losses. We could explore them all, but we chose to dive into a single example 🥽

We revisited H2A.X evolution across Eukarya and Metazoa. This histone variant's dual presence in distantly-related species sparks questions on its evolutionary role 🧐. We question previous hypotheses that claimed a role in fast cell divisions during aquatic embryogenesis. 🙅

Unlike the other two species, Owenia fusiformis has two different H2A.X variants. The most abundant one has a critical change in the C-terminus residue (T142P) that normally undergoes Tyr phosphorylation, which has been shown to affect DNA damage repair, cell cycle, and more!

Histone genes were clustered, as expected, and these clusters were very dynamic throughout embryonic development . Both gene expression and chromatin accessibility peaked 📈 roughly at the gastrula and early post-gastrula stages, and declined soon after