Virginia Pimmett
Postdoc in the Lagha lab at IGMM in Montpellier FR // Drosophila fan, dev bio fan, microscope fan, hockey fan // 🇨🇦->🇫🇷
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettAfter a huge amount of work w/ @alex-stark.bsky.social's group, a new version of our Ledidi preprint is now out! In an era of AI-designed proteins, the next leap will be controlling when, where, and how much of these proteins are expressed in living cells. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettCan one map the genome-wide binding (1) and its protein partners (2) simultaneously from the same sample? Yes, one can. with CUT&ID ✂️🪪 Spearheaded — singlehandedly — by @annanordin.bsky.social No need of transgenesis, cloning and overexpression. Check it out, it's fast and its works.
- CUT&ID for simultaneous profiling of protein-DNA and protein-protein interactions biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
- Dead internet theory gets yet another point on the board.
wait, wait, what ???? aixiv.science
- Reposted by Virginia Pimmett[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettSingle-Molecule DNA Footprinting and Transcription Imaging Reveal the Molecular Mechanisms of Promoter Dynamics biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettNow online! Thermodynamic principles link in vitro transcription factor affinities to single-molecule chromatin states in cells
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettAre you an early-stage graduate student (2nd or 3rd year) or early-stage postdoc based in the US or Canada, working primarily in Drosophila? Would you like to help improve the experience of all trainees working in Drosophila research? If so, read on. (Please repost to reach a broad audience.)
- Reposted by Virginia Pimmett🧬 𝐋’𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐝𝐞́𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐠𝐞̀𝐧𝐞𝐬 Des scientifiques de l'IGMM utilisent l’embryon de drosophile pour démontrer que la répression de l’expression des gènes est un mécanisme beaucoup plus complexe qu’attendu. 📖 👉 lnkd.in/dPqUREuf 📷 © Mounia Lagha et Virginia Pimmett
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettFlyBase needs your help! We ask that European labs continue to contribute to Cambridge, UK FlyBase, whereas US and other non-European labs can contribute to US FlyBase. For more information and how to donate: wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase...
- On vacation but still managed to find a microscope. Spouse is woefully unsurprised.
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettA Summer reading recommendation: new primer in @dev-journal.bsky.social explains how dynamical systems theory unlocks the logic of developmental patterning Everything from bistable switches & oscillators to phase portraits & more with Python code to explore journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
- Reposted by Virginia Pimmett🚀 @hfspo.bsky.social funded Postdoc 3-year contract Start after Dec 2025 📩 Apply: mounia.lagha@igmm.cnrs.fr Subject: "[HFSP Post doc application]" 📎 CV + short research summary + cover letter 🔗 More info: euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/363437 @laghalab.bsky.social @umontpellier.bsky.social @cnrs.fr
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettWe are hiring! "Researcher in DNA-Based Information Processing Systems" (PhD or postdoc level). Co-supervision by Prof. Ralf Reussner (KIT computer science) and myself (biological systems). Combination of experiments and computational work. Please Apply / Repost! www.pse.kit.edu/english/karr...
- Come and join the team! It's a stellar group of people and some really interesting questions to dissect with all kinds of cool tools in play.
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettTom Lehrer died today. He was one of the great comedians our culture ever produced. Without Tom, there's no Weird Al, probably no that entire branch of comedy. He went alone and beat the odds. youtu.be/frAEmhqdLFs?...
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettIn today’s publication in Science we introduce Zincore: a novel protein of QRICH1 and SEPHS1 and functions as a transcriptional coregulator dedicated to zinc finger transcription factors. Here’s how we found it: 🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 1/11
- Reposted by Virginia Pimmett🎉 Thrilled to share our new paper in @narjournal.bsky.social! We uncover how the Hox TF Ultrabithorax controls alternative splicing to shape muscle patterning and homeotic identity 🧬 @igmm-montpel.bsky.social 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/nar/...
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettTextbooks: “Enhancers are just a bunch of TFBSs” But how do they REALLY work? New paper with many contributors here @berkeleylab.lbl.gov, @anshulkundaje.bsky.social, @anusri.bsky.social A 🧵 (1/n) Free access link: rdcu.be/erD22
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettWe currently have a call for support that has gone out to European labs, to support FlyBase-UK. We are asking our colleagues from labs in the US and other countries to wait for a similar call to them that will go out in the near future, to support the US sites. We thank you for your patience.
- URGENT: FlyBase has lost practically all its funding overnight; even user fees are tied up in denied grant funding. 🤬🤯 Any lab using @flybase.bsky.social please donate using the link in post below. This incredible community, on whose backs our #Drosophila labs depend, can't be left out to dry.
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettWhy use #CRISPR in #Drosophila when RNAi works so well? Because for some genes well is not good enough. Check out new preprint from the lab demonstrating a role for Vps15 in Wingless trafficking. Something that was missed in several RNAi screens. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Virginia Pimmettincredible, he's actually going down, what a perfect end to the night how much is Poilievre cursing Trump out right now, he's got to be fucking livid
- Reposted by Virginia Pimmettcheck out our latest paper investigating how TF concentration affects transcription dynamics @dev-journal.bsky.social. optogenetics+mRNA #imaging in #drosophila #embryos. joint effort with @stathopouloslab.bsky.social @caltech.edu. bravo to @pimmett.bsky.social and J.McGehee.
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettIt's always the people you most expect www.bbc.com/news/article...
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettA thread about power. There is a lesson here, about how beating autocrats like Trump involves STANDING UP to them, not backing down. Find a way to stand up. Canada's PM told Trump to fuck off, and now Trump is treating him better. 1/
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettCelebrating 10 years of our lab with a new preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... How does enhancer location within a TAD control transcriptional bursts from a cognate promoter? Experiments by Jana Tünnermann and modelling by Gregory Roth
- A stressful tragedy for the scientific staff, but a blessing for humanity. Let it fade into data-destroyed obscurity.
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettDon’t forget to register for this special conference. If you like gene regulation from single molecule approaches, please join us #EMBLSingleMolecule. Imaging and Omics and a bit of theory for lots of fun!
- 📢 Have you registered for 'Gene regulation: one molecule at a time' yet? Submit your abstract by 8 April! 👉🏼 s.embl.org/grg25-01-bl #EMBLSingleMolecule will bring together single molecule genomics and imaging to study mechanisms across the central dogma at molecular resolution 🧬🔍
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettWe wrote a review article on modelling and design of transcriptional enhancers using sequence-to-function models. From conventional machine learning methods to CNNs and using models as oracles/generative AI for synthetic enhancer design! @natrevbioeng.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s44...
- Reposted by Virginia Pimmett#StandUpForScience #StandUpForScience_Montpellier Montpellier. Pour finir la journée tous ensemble !
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettSpatial transcriptomics in fly brain and body. Wonderful collaboration with @steinaerts.bsky.social led by @jasperjanssens.bsky.social @pierremangeol.bsky.social Nikolai Hecker & Gabriele Partel - look at mRNA patterns in muscles and brains spatialfly.aertslab.org elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettExcited to share the peer-reviewed version of our paper on predicting the chromatin response to TF dosage using transfer learning www.cell.com/cell-genomic...
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettIn her Essay, Renata Basto highlights the huge budget cuts facing the scientific community in France. In response to the cuts, a group of researchers has formed the ‘Pour une Recherche d'Avenir’ initiative to secure the future of French research. journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
- Explained compound-X chromosomes to a non-fly geneticist today. Turns out: a) I had enough colours of markers on my desk to draw out the cross, and b) it appears my undergrad classes in developmental gene regulation from undergrad *are* still buried deep in my brain somewhere.
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettSingle molecules, in living zebrafish embryos, during hour-long period of development: Jonas' work on binding kinetics of cohesin and CTCF around ZGA now online. Great collab with labs of @lucagiorgetti.bsky.social @akispapantonis.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s414...
- Reposted by Virginia Pimmett"Genes are... the easy part" @philipcball.bsky.social argues biologists need to embrace complexity from the start, rather than beginning with oversimplified "one gene, one trait" models +1 www.cell.com/cell-systems...
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettOnline Now: Identification of molecular determinants of gene-specific bursting patterns by high-throughput imaging screens
- Reposted by Virginia Pimmett#SaveTheDate Valérie Hilgers on March the 4th #BIOLuMSeminarSeries @igmm-montpel.bsky.social @irim-life.bsky.social @crbm-montpellier.bsky.social @laghalab.bsky.social
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettNow that musk is saying he’s doing the DOGE stuff “because the globalists have plotted a Great Replacement in which they use government handouts to buy votes from illegal immigrants and urban blacks” maybe we don’t have to act like this is about deficits or cost cutting anymore
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettStand with science. Always.
- Reposted by Virginia Pimmett1/n Excited to share our new preprint! Using live imaging in Drosophila embryos, we show that RNA Pol II clusters switch from sites of initiation to elongation during zygotic genome activation and that they are stably associated with an active gene: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettMaking intrabodies from antibodies just got easier! Learn how we made 𝟭𝟵 intrabodies to bind and light up peptides and histone modifications in live cells. And thanks to Academia, all sequences are freely available. (video credit: Yuko Sato @YukoSatoT2) (1/15) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Today's madcap adventure in pursuit of science: convinced my labmates to eat a bunch of cheese so I could have the wrappers for an experiment. 💯 agree that @laghalab.bsky.social's homemade chocolate cake today was way better, but they kindly suffered through the otherwise awful cheese anyways.
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettInsect wings arose with a genetic circuit that extends the useful range of a BMP morphogen biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettMeasuring morphogen transport over multiple spatial scales in live zebrafish embryos biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettOur latest work: how can compartmentalization emerge in a eukaryotic genome lacking canonical heterochromatin? By investigating bacterial genomes put in yeast, we show that the presence or absence of transcription is sufficient! #chromatin #3Dgenome #generegulation www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 👇
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettOur paper is out! We delevoped a method to follow individual translating ribosomes for hours in living cells, and discovered that ribosomes are great friends and help each other in problematic situations: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
- Apropos of very little in global happenings, the lab jukebox today is featuring CanCon🇨🇦 by way of Great Big Sea: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wcj...
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettHey Halo-tag users—wish you could bring something along for the ride with a JF dye? Pratik Kumar & Luke Lavis dropped multifunctional fluorescent ligands letting us pull down & manipulate organelles. Proud of our cameo showing a killer application: Brd4 hops from euchromatin to nucleoli in 60 min!
- 🧵Prepint alert! Optimizing Multifunctional Fluorescent Ligands for Intracellular Labeling | tinyurl.com/3n55hvsc. With Jason Vevea, Ed Chapman, and @so-lets-kilab70.bsky.social, we combined dye chemistry, HaloTag, microscopy and cell biology to make protein purification and manipulation tools.
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettIf you have been affected by the fires in LA, or are concerned about your ability to keep precious Drosophila strains going during the latest funding crisis, we will host your strains as a backup. Please email me. Please amplify. If you are also able to host fly strains, add your name as well.
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettTranslation of mRNA can be triggered with spatiotemporal control in zebrafish 🐟 embryos by light ⚡ & FlashCaps 🧪⚗😊 Kudos to all authors and collaborators 🙏👍 www.nature.com/articles/s42...
- Reposted by Virginia Pimmett🎓 Join us for our Spring School in Quantitative Biology: "Cell Dynamics in Developmental Systems" ✨ Featuring renowned speakers and hands-on workshops! Learn more and register: www.edu.bio.ens.psl.eu/spip.php?art...
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettOur new paper is finally out, showing that the same enhancer sequences - and likely the same transcription factors recruited to them - affect the activity of distal enhancers and their looping over to target gene promoters. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Came to the scope today. Brought my knitting but forgot my neck lamp, which is...not my most brilliant move.
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettSuper excited to share our new study from the @jbuenrostro.bsky.social Lab in @nature.com! We developed a computational method for tracking transcription factor and nucleosome binding using single-cell ATAC-seq and deep learning. Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettDevastating for scientists and their research, and everyone who benefits from that research. I’m not sure if everyone outside academia is aware that a delay or “pause” in grant funding often means the researchers themselves are lost from the field, along with their expertise.
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettCome join us for this very first conference on single molecule approaches (both omics et imaging) to understand gene expression regulation. Lots of slots for young selected speakers!
- 📣 #EMBLSingleMolecule is open for registrations! Our aim is to catalyse the emergence of a new generation of mechanistic models of the regulation of genes across each steps of the central dogma. 🧬🔍 👉🏼 s.embl.org/grg25-01-bl 📅 15 – 18 July 2025 📜 Submit your abstract by 8 April!
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettExcited to share James Jusuf's preprint: By integrating Micro-C with SuperRes Live-Imaging we can calibrate genomics&imaging to perform absolute quantification of looping (e.g. this loop is present 3%) We quantify mESC 36k loops: <loops> are generally rare (2.3%) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Remembered to re-up my Canadian overseas elections registration today. If this applies to you too, maybe get on with that eh?
- Reposted by Virginia PimmettWe are happy to share our enhancer scramble story, a strategy to create hundreds of stochastic deletions, inversions, and duplications within mammalian gene regulatory regions and associate these new architectures with gene expression levels 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
