Come and join Nobel laureate Paul Nurse, President @royalsociety.org, and philosopher Christof Rapp @caslmu.bsky.social @lmu.de in exploring one of the most fundamental questions in science: What is Life?
Save the date: 17 April, 16:15📍LMU, main building
register: info@cas.lmu.de, www.cas.lmu.de
Sunny greetings from Evogen2026!
Thanks for all the great talks and evolutionary insights 🧬
Even the lab dogs are feeling festive 🎄🐾
Merry Christmas from the Hellnardos!
@fionacassiopea.bsky.social
🎉 Big congrats to Fiona Edenhofer for defending her PhD! 🎓
In her thesis on the evolution of GRNs, she performed cross-species CRISPRi screens and helped establish primate iPSC lines.
Fiona was key for many social events and brought the Kölsch to Munich.
We will miss you and wish you all the best!
📢 Seminar Announcement
We’re excited to welcome Jörg Beckmann (Nuremberg Zoo) for a talk on the new roles of modern zoos — from research to conservation and beyond.
🗓️ 12 Jan 2026, 4 PM
📍 LMU Biozentrum, Lecture Hall B01.019
See you there! 🦒🦍
Want to explore your own data with CroCoNet? Check out the R package and the associated tutorial at hellmann-lab.github.io/CroCoNet/.
Huge thanks to all authors and everyone who helped shape CroCoNet!
We found that human- and great-ape-specific transposable elements from the LTR7 family are enriched near POU5F1 target genes, suggesting that these insertions may have contributed to the rewiring of the network. This example showcases that CroCoNet can successfully detect shifts in gene regulation.
We applied CroCoNet to a scRNA-seq dataset of primate early neural differentiation. The module of the pluripotency factor POU5F1 (OCT4) turned out to be one of the most diverged among all network modules, even though POU5F1 itself has a conserved sequence and expression pattern.
To address this challenge, CroCoNet relies on network variability between replicates of the same species and compares cross-species variability to this baseline. This way it can detect meaningful changes, pointing us to the most conserved and diverged modules of the network.
Studying how gene regulatory networks are rewired across species helps us understand phenotypic evolution. But networks inferred from transcriptomic data are notoriously noisy, and cross-species comparisons are particularly sensitive to this noise, as it can mask true evolutionary differences.
Out now: we’re happy to share our new preprint on CroCoNet (Cross-species Comparison of Networks), a framework for robust comparative network analyses.
👉 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
We applied CroCoNet to a scRNA-seq dataset of primate early neural differentiation. The module of the pluripotency factor POU5F1 (OCT4) turned out to be one of the most diverged among all network modules, even though POU5F1 itself has a conserved sequence and expression pattern.
To address this challenge, CroCoNet relies on network variability between replicates of the same species and compares cross-species variability to this baseline. This way it can detect meaningful changes, pointing us to the most conserved and diverged modules of the network.
Studying how gene regulatory networks are rewired across species helps us understand phenotypic evolution. But networks inferred from transcriptomic data are notoriously noisy, and cross-species comparisons are particularly sensitive to this noise, as it can mask true evolutionary differences.
Hellnardos at 13th GSCN conference @gscnoffice.bsky.social. We are excited about the next 3 days of stem cell science! 🧫
🎉 Big congrats to Philipp Janssen for defending his PhD! 🎓
He’s been a key part of the lab, contributing to many projects, including scRNAseq background and cross-species cell type comparisons, and always ready with new ideas (& coffee).
We’re sad to see him go but excited to see what comes next!
We’re excited to host @nkschaefer.bsky.social from the Pollen Lab @brainevodevo.bsky.social, UCSF!
He’ll present Cellbouncer, a new bioinformatic tool for pooled single-cell processing that yields insights into hominid evolution 🧬
More about the lab 👉 www.pollenlab.org
Big congratulations to @pascalstuempfl.bsky.social, who successfully defended his Master’s thesis “Gene Network Conservation Metrics – Development and Benchmarking” last Friday! It’s been a pleasure having you in the group, and we’re excited to see what comes next — well done, Pascal! 🎉👏
I am thrilled to finally share our new preprint on prime-seq2 🚀
We improved one of the most cost-efficient bulk RNAseq protocols out there to end up with +60% usable reads.
Check it out: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
a🧵1/9
For those who want to try it in the lab:
we also published a step-by-step, easy-to-follow protocol for prime-seq2 🧪
👉 dx.doi.org/10.17504/pro...
🎉Excited to share our new preprint: “Improving RNA-seq protocols”
We introduce a systematic approach to maximize usable reads in RNA-seq.
With this, we created prime-seq2, improving one of the most cost-efficient bulk RNAseq protocols.
👉Check it out: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Meet the TAs’ offices (5/5)
✨ Ines takes care of all the details that keep things organized
📑 Mrs Zhao is running the secretary
⛰️ Karin is mostly retired, but still comes in to help out
🧫 Sara is our greatest help in cell culture & ordering
Together, they make everything work smoothly 💙
Office (4/5): Welcome to the PIs offices
We are handling dogs, budgets, people, projects and databases.
Ines with Elly is running the dry lab
Wolfgang with Mo is running the wet lab
It’s such a privilege to work with all these wonderful people ❤️ and we have the best jobs we can imagine.
What do zombies 🧟, hostages ⛓️💥 and orphans 🧸 have in common?
The „Wandertag“ of the Hellnardos in escape rooms!
Can you guess who was in which room?
@pascalstuempfl.bsky.social
Office introduction series (3/5):
We are the single cell squad (scQUAD) 🙌
⛓️ Dana links peaks to genes
🕸️ Anita compares gene regulatory networks across primates
🎛️ Pascal tunes conservation metrics
Office (2/5):
Welcome to the Pee-to-Profile Office!
🧪 Johanna developed a protocol to reprogram iPSCs from primate urine cells,
🧠 Manqi uses them to make neurons to study FOXP2,
🧫 Eva differentiates them to macrophages for cross-species comparisons and
📈 Daniel extends prime-seq to profile them all!
No, fortunately, Wilma’s integrity testing doesn’t include human muscle fibers (yet).
@schaffmayer.bsky.social
@antoniake.bsky.social
@felixpfoertner.bsky.social
