Roman Zug

Account no longer in use. You know where to find me

Check out our new ✨preprint✨ led by James Schmidt! Here we identified a new role for the gene KANSL1 in ciliary biology using Xenopus, with validations in patients with associated Koolen-de Vries Syndrome, which is characterized by hypersociability. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

@RealAdamHunt Source?

Implications of distinct evolutionary theories of depression: if depression is related to unobtainable life goals, let them go. If it's related to rumination, re-double efforts! Contradictory and complicated (and might apply to different cases....)

It has a name

Registration is open for a Symposium on “Cells and Embryos: #NotInTheGenes” in La Pedrera, Barcelona. 18/19 of September 2025. Attendance is free but you need to register shorturl.at/77Wqn Stembryo lab @UPFbiomed @ERC_Research

🧵 I am very excited to share my postdoc project preprint investigating the role of NR4A2, a transcription factor linked to neuropsychiatric disorders, in the establishment of cell type identities in the claustro-insular region of the brain. 1/9 biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

@LFodoulian Great work! It also lends further support to the hypothesis that (neuro)developmental disorders caused by haploinsufficiency of transcriptional regulators result from defects in cell fate determination: journals.biologists.com/bio/article/11…

Importantly, it is IRF6's own enhancer that gets disrupted, thereby perturbing the positive feedback loop needed for proper IRF6 expression levels. This is further evidence showing that disrupted positive feedback can lead to developmental disorders: bit.ly/48ILWTz

My take on scientists leaving Twitter/X: It's great to see communities really developing on other platforms and there are lots of good reasons to boycott this place... 1/n

I am excited to share our review, published online today @NatRevMCB. Pilong Li, Gaofeng Pei, @Heankel_, and I review the current literature on the regulation of transcription by condensates, large length-scale assemblies of complexes (Figure 1). nature.com/articles/s4158…

Welche „gemeinsamen Überzeugungen“ hat eine Ministerin für *Bildung und Forschung* mit einem Donald Trump, der paradigmatisch für die Verachtung der Wahrheit steht? #Bullshit

Strong evidence of reduced NPAS3 expression in modern humans due to loss of enhancer function! Further support for the hypothesis that loss-of-function of genes involved in brain development was important for human evolution: tinyurl.com/2p6aarkc academic.oup.com/mbe/article/41…

Convergent evolution of #spiders and #Oreo. 🤯

@RealAdamHunt @ed_hagen Agreed - it was never meant to be a general explanation.

I saw Roman present this at EHBEA 2023 - one point is that this is confirmed for specific high impact cases, but I'm skeptical it can explain all neurodiversity (should be observed in other species? And why so persistent despite being highly visible to selection? And why strengths?)

The commonality of mental disorders raises profound questions about evolution's role in shaping our minds. Maybe these conditions are part of our evolutionary journey, reflecting trade-offs where the benefits once outweighed the costs. 🛤️

@dagarfield Depends on what you mean. Given that disorders caused by TF haploinsufficiency are rare overall, TF limitation isn't a frequent event (due to buffering mechanisms). On the other hand, TFs are in limiting concentrations much more often than, say, enzymes or other recessive genes.

@ZugRoman I pose to you this question: How often are TFs in limiting concentrations?

In fact, I discussed many of the "unsuspected links" between phase separation and transcription factor haploinsufficiency in my 2022 review... journals.biologists.com/bio/article/11…

ARID1B controls transcriptional programs of axon projection in an organoid model of the human corpus callosum. Check out the study led by @IMBA_Vienna @Knoblich_lab in @CellStemCell #SfN24 hubs.li/Q02R-Qrn0

Our new paper by Hiroshi Arai et al. has been published! Cell-based assays and comparative genomics revealed the conserved and hidden effects of Wolbachia on insect sex determination academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/arti…

Das hier ⬇️ ist der Endgegner. Nicht das bisschen #Migration