Niakan Lab

A human embryo implantation model from the @Rugg-Gunn Lab

*key for understanding the early extraembryonic-maternal interactions

Congrats to everyone involved! It’s been great to see this project develop. Huge credit to the @babrahaminst.bsky.social authors 🥂🍾

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

XIST Drives X-Chromosome Inactivation and Safeguards Female Extraembryonic Cells in Humans Dosage compensation of sex chromosomes through X-chromosome inactivation (XCI) is required for mice extra-embryonic tissue growth and embryo development. The species specificity in mechanisms and timi...

𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐭! 🎉
“𝐗𝐈𝐒𝐓 𝐃𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐗-𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐚𝐟𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐅𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜 𝐂𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐬” 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐢𝐨𝐑𝐱𝐢𝐯!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Long-term imaging of cell divisions in human preimplantation embryos - Nature Biotechnology An optimized approach for live imaging of human embryos enables visualization of mitotic errors during blastocyst development.

This is an excellent news and views article from Corentin Mollier & Jean-Léon Maître @maitrejl.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thrilled to see this published!

Well done Ahmed on spearheading a project revealing mitotic errors in human embryos arise much later than anticipated.

Thank you to collaborators @bensteventon.bsky.social Leila Muresan and all of the wonderful teams at Bourn Hall and Create Fertility clinics!

We are recuiting two new Associate Professors here in Oxford Biochemistry. Come join us! Reach out to me if you have any questions. Please repost! tinyurl.com/mr3m7bd3

Looking to pursue cutting-edge research in early development, maternal-fetal interaction, or placental biology? See 👇

- Funded PhD www.trophoblast.cam.ac.uk/phd-students...
- Next Generation Fellowship www.trophoblast.cam.ac.uk/next-generat...
- MPhil www.mphil.bio.cam.ac.uk/mphil-pathwa...

Cell-type-specific functionality encoded within the intrinsically disordered regions of OCT4 - Nature Communications Here they perform a systematic dissection of OCT4 and reveal how intrinsically disordered regions can be used to serve specific functions during reprogramming and embryonic development. This can be exploited to engineer more efficient and specific reprogramming factors.

Hot off the press!

Cell-type-specific functionality encoded within the intrinsically disordered regions of OCT4

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mechano-osmotic signals control chromatin state and fate transitions in pluripotent stem cells - Nature Cell Biology McCreery, Stubb et al. show that mechano-osmotic changes in the nucleus induce general transcriptional repression and prime chromatin for cell fate transitions by relieving repression of specific differentiation genes.

How do #stemcells integrate information to coordinate fate decisions? Delighted to finally see our work showing how growth factors regulate the mechano-osmotic state of the #nucleus and #chromatin to control #pluripotency exit out! www.nature.com/articles/s41... see 🧵 👇

One of our favourite tabs is Resources: we're listing all of our datasets, codes, beginning to upload and make accessible raw imaging data and lab protocols. Please check it out, we hope this is useful!

niakanlab.com/resources/

Niakan lab

🚀 Exciting news: our new lab website is live! 🌐
Check it out here: niakanlab.com
We’ll be sharing updates on our research, publications, outreach, resources etc.
Curious to hear what you think! ✨

#LabLife #Research #StemCells #DevelopmentalBiology

Today we had our lab retreat at the Eddington Postdoc Centre for the first time in a while!🧪
We had so much fun combining workshops and team-building activities, and we definitely made the most of our time together.
Do you do retreats in your lab? What are they usually like?
We will read you below!👇

Last Friday, we said goodbye to our amazing summer student, Yiping! Thank you for your hard work and bringing great energy to our team this summer. Wishing you the best in your next chapter!☀️

Protocol for immunofluorescence detection and quantification of phosphorylated SMAD proteins in human blastocysts The transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) signaling superfamily includes NODAL and bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling, which lead to the phosph…

Our protocol with all the details you'll need to detect and quantify phospo-SMAD proteins in your (human) embryo, is finally out today @cp-starprotocols.bsky.social.
Thanks again to my wonderful co-author @toddfallesen.bsky.social and the @niakanlab.bsky.social.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This project has been very special to me. I want to thank James @lab-turner.bsky.social who gave me the chance to build my own research line outside of the lab's main focus on sex chromosomes, and to our collaborators Chris Barrington, Clare Critcher, Waz Varsally, Greg Alanis @niakanlab.bsky.social

Suppression of ERK signalling promotes pluripotent epiblast in the human blastocyst Nature Communications - The authors show human embryo lineage specification in the blastocyst is driven by differential FGF/ERK signaling, which segregates yolk sac-fated hypoblast and embryonic...

Delighted to see this out! Human embryos depend on FGF/ERK signalling to specify epiblast versus primitive endoderm cells. Well done Claire Simon and the lab for their contributions! Many thanks to Mary Herbert @josh-brickman.bsky.social @cwhanna.bsky.social labs for brilliant contributions!

Suppression of ERK signalling promotes pluripotent epiblast in the human blastocyst - Nature Communications The authors show human embryo lineage specification in the blastocyst is driven by differential FGF/ERK signaling, which segregates yolk sac-fated hypoblast and embryonic epiblast. They establish naïv...

Very happy to see this nice collaboration with @niakanlab.bsky.social bear fruit. Beautiful work by @clairesimon.bsky.social culturing human embryos in the presence of FGF/ERK stimulation/inhibition. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very sorry to hear of the passing of Roger Pedersen. He was an outstanding developmental and stem cell biologist & helped to establish the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. Our thoughts are with his family.

obgyn.stanford.edu/in-the-news/...

Very sorry to hear of the passing of Professor Roger Pedersen, whose visionary leadership helped establish the @scicambridge.bsky.social. I will never forget how Roger personally taught my group how to dissect early post-implantation mouse embryos; watching him at the microscope was truly inspiring

Thanks very much for an outstanding talk Margarida!

Congratulations Busma and the Loke CTR team!!

#announcement please share 📢

We're delighted to launch registration for the Annual Meeting 2025 'The Placenta at Term' bit.ly/annualmeetin...

And, applications open for Placental Biology Course, returning in-person, in Cambridge bit.ly/placentalbio...
25 places, application deadline 21 March!

Congratulations Christina and to everyone involved! It's terrific recognition of the public dialogue!

Cambridge Reproduction Forum: Why do people have children? Join us for an afternoon of interdisciplinary conversation, flash talks and a networking reception.

'Why do people have children?'

That's the question we're posing at our next Forum. Join us on 12 March at West Hub, Cambridge from 3pm.
Interdisciplinary dialogues, flash talks and a networking reception.

Registration open on Eventbrite www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1151888342...

We have extended the abstract submission deadline to January 26th—don’t miss this opportunity!

We’re also delighted to announce that Dr. Kathy Niakan will be delivering the 2024 Mary Lyon Medal Lecture during the conference. @gensocuk.bsky.social
@niakanlab.bsky.social