Maximilian Billmann

Happy to share our critical evaluation of reproducibility metrics for context-specific CRISPR screens with my former colleagues @henrynward @Michael_Aregger @UMNComputerSci @DonnellyCentre and my first paper at @UniBonn @UniklinikBonn authors.elsevier.com/a/1h5ag8YyDfmx…

CRISPR activation screens map the genomic landscape of cancer glycome remodeling dlvr.it/TRxwJR

Great to the see the flurry of single gene knockdown Perturb-seq like atlases from cell-lines, mouse brain etc over the last few days. These are undoubtedly very valuable datasets. I just want to re-iterate a few other very important expt. design considerations 1/

One should have expected such comparisons in any early virtual cell paper...

Proud of my colleagues for this remarkable work. Congrats Axel!

Happy to share that my postdoctoral work is now out in @ScienceMagazine. We show that the RNA-programmable bridge recombinase ISCro4 can insert, delete, or invert multi-kilobase DNA fragments at defined genomic sites in human cells. Study link: science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… CRISPR-Cas has transformed genome editing, but many diseases involve diverse patient-specific mutations within the same gene. A mutation-agnostic alternative is to insert a healthy gene copy at a defined genomic locus, but gene-sized, site-specific insertions remain a major challenge. Main findings of our work: (1) ISCro4 is highly active in human cells and can be delivered by plasmid or all-RNA formats (2) Proof-of-concept programmable multi-kb insertions, deletions, and inversions (3) Structural insights into the basis of enhanced ISCro4 activity (4) Specificity and off-target characterisation (5) A framework to support future development and adoption of bridge recombinases The work was made possible through a close collaboration between the Jinek Lab, @schwanklab, and @jcornlab. I am deeply grateful to all of my co-authors for the team spirit, hard work, and dedication that went into this publication: @talasandris, Javier Fernández Carrera, @nicopmat, Lilly van de Venn, Charles Yeh, @p_kulcsar, @marquark, @YanikWeber, @SaskiaGerecke, Isabelle Harvey-Seutcheu, Dominic Mailänder, @MorPfl, and @ChrisChanez89. Special thanks to my supervisor, Prof. Martin Jinek, for his outstanding mentorship, and to Prof. Gerald Schwank and Prof. Jacob Corn for their generous support throughout. Finally, I would like to thank everyone in the Jinek lab for creating a supportive work environment, and @EMBO for funding my postdoctoral work. In parallel, independent work led by @ntperry13, @SKonermann and @pdhsu also reported ISCro4 activity in human cells, reinforcing the robustness and momentum of this direction. Please reach out if you would like to test the system or discuss potential applications. Relevant plasmids are now available via @Addgene.

🚀 Excited to share new paper in Nature Genetics: Human Retina Cell Atlas (HRCA) with ~4M cells, >130 retinal cell types, deep scRNA/ATAC integration. Enables cross-species comparisons & GWAS cell-type enrichment. Huge thanks to Ignacio Ibarra & Chen lab. nature.com/articles/s4158…

Our paper is published in @CellReports! We apply a multi-omic framework to analyze nearly 2,000 noncoding variants at risk loci for age-related macular degeneration and nominate 59 variants as pathogenic. A great collab w/ @Jiaying_Gia @suragnair @anshulkundaje and @HowardYChang!

@thenormanlab Much appreciated! There is so much to be screened. I look forward to complete reading your preprint.

@maxbillmann Thanks Maximilian! Your paper is cited in the intro to our map and we are big fans. You have more pairs in total for sure. What we mean is largest all-by-all measured in one experiment (in line with the focus on scaling CRISPR perturbations).

Amazing new data set by @thenormanlab, congrats! Not sure about the 'biggest GI map in human cells' though. I guess it depends how you count, but we covered quite a number of gene pairs too: doi: 10.1101/2025.06.30.662193

In my excitement I forgot to actually link the preprint! biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

🚀 Announcing the Official @OpenTargets MCP! We've partnered with @AnthropicAI to provide AI with seamless access to high-quality genetics and target-discovery data. Open for the entire community to accelerate therapeutic development blog.opentargets.org/official-open-…

Why define conditions, donors or even *tasks* when we can just use cells themselves to guide model output Presenting Stack, in-context learning using just cells! Use cell context -> enhance its embedding Engineer cell context ->modify its state Led by the brilliant @Mingze7316

Together with Emma Dann, we are thrilled to present a massive new Perturb-seq atlas of 22M primary CD4+ T cells, from 4 donors, across 3 timepoints – the result of a decade-long collaboration between the Marson (@MarsonLab) and Pritchard (@jkpritch) labs. 🧵👇

Impressive effort

An Analysis compares the performance of 27 single-cell perturbation response prediction methods under comprehensive test conditions. nature.com/articles/s4159…

Preserve as much as possible or your results may be too optimistic on most real-world data.

Pooled genetic CRISPR screening is improved in complex models through leveraging internal controls go.nature.com/4giANvD rdcu.be/eRy4P

A genome-scale single-cell CRISPRi map of trans gene regulation across human pluripotent stem cell lines dlvr.it/TPZvtW

Invested in high content CRISPR screening and predictive models? Come to Perturb2026 (March 18/19 2026 in Vienna)! I am co-organizing this conference and am greatly looking forward to what promises to be a fantastic meeting. perturb2026.bio

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