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Research updates, people and life in the lab.
Christian Mayer and Seth Blackshaw co-edited the special issue Lineage Specification in Development of Current Opinion in Genetics & Development (Developmental Mechanisms, Patterning and Evolution, 2026). Its 15 reviews explore how cells acquire their identities, how lineages build tissue complexity during development, and how new structures and cell types arise in evolution.
Working with Seth was a pleasure, and we thank all the contributing authors for sharing their expertise and thoughtful perspectives through their reviews.
The collection is accompanied by our editorial overview, Specifying cell identity, shaping tissue diversity.
Read the full text via Elsevier (author link; free access may be time-limited) · DOI
The 15 reviews in this issue
- Autosomal random monoallelic expression in development and disease — Harshada Jadhav, Srimonta Gayen
- What’s in a niche? Elucidating the role of the ECM in cell fate commitment — Atoosa Amel, Anna Alemany
- Conservation of retinal direction-selective circuits across vertebrate species — Allison T. Reed, Alex L. Kolodkin, Karina Chaudhari, Robert J. Johnston
- Temporal trajectories underlying adult neuronal diversity — Tulsi Patel
- Lineage tracing in human cortical development — Guohua Yuan, Marilyn Steyert, Tomasz J. Nowakowski
- Cis-regulatory strategies in developmental patterning — Jack P. C. Williams, M. Joaquina Delás
- GABAergic neuron fate specification and lineage allocation: from development to disorder — Elena Dvoretskova, Christian Mayer
- Reassessing forebrain organization: recent evidence challenges the prosomere model — Elsie Place, Elizabeth Manning, Seth Blackshaw, Marysia Placzek
- Epigenetic regulation of cell fate determination in cortical development — Jeong-Eun Lee, Philipp Abe, Mareike Albert
- Evolutionary specializations in primate cortical development — Jiamiao Yuan, Xuerui Zeng, Jichao Yin, Bing Su
- Gliogenesis in the mammalian cerebral cortex — Parama Mitra, Shubha Tole
- The emergence of neurogenic lineage motifs in building the vertebrate retina — Mei Wang, Jie He
- Clonal analysis for understanding fate biases in developing embryos — Sergey Isaev, Igor Adameyko
- Oscillatory gene expression in cell differentiation and tissue patterning — Hiromi Shimojo, Ryoichiro Kageyama
- Convergent re-evolution of CNS structures: focus on the fovea — Susana da Silva
Christian Mayer spoke at the symposium Inhibitory Neurons: From synapses and microcircuits to behavior in Freiburg.
Seline Partsch joined the lab for her master’s thesis.
Christian Mayer presented the lab’s work on how risk genes affect developmental gene regulation at the EMBO Workshop on neurodevelopmental disorders in Otsu, Japan.
A review with Renata Batista-Brito, Mercedes Paredes and Carla G. Silva brought together research on inhibitory neuron development and circuit function in European Journal of Neuroscience.
Ann Rose Bright received the Young Scientist Award of the MPI for Biological Intelligence, together with Inbal Shainer of the Baier lab, for her work on how the timing of neurogenesis shapes GABAergic neuron development.
Lab retreat in the Bavarian Alps.
Our review in Current Opinion in Genetics & Development discussed how developmental lineage and gene regulation shape GABAergic neuron identity, and how these processes relate to neurodevelopmental disorders.
Read the full text via Elsevier (author link; free access may be time-limited) · DOI
Christian Mayer visited INMED in Marseille at the invitation of Stéphane Bugeon.
Our preprint examines how the relative levels of SP9 and DLX influence gene regulation and the production of distinct GABAergic neuron types.
Revised on 8 July 2026 under the title shown above.
The lab attended the GOLGI III conference in Bordeaux.
A collaborative preprint used lineage tracing to investigate the developmental potential of an endodermal cell population in the chick embryo.
Christian Mayer attended the SFARI Investigator Meeting in New York.
A collaborative study in Nature Cancer developed a human brainstem organoid model of diffuse midline glioma. Our group contributed plasmids and scientific input.
Christian Mayer presented the lab’s work at the ICM in Paris, hosted by Stéphanie Baulac and Bassem Hassan.
Ann Rose Bright was invited to present her research at the SYNAPSES Symposium at Yale University.
Yana Kotlyarenko successfully defended her doctoral thesis, Competence of Inhibitory Neuron Progenitors in the Telencephalon, at LMU Munich.
A collaborative preprint explored the developmental organisation of cortical layering across tetrapods, including lineage tracing in salamander.
Our study in Nature Neuroscience showed how developmental timing influences neuronal maturation while progenitors retain the capacity to generate diverse neuronal identities.
A collaborative study in Nature Communications used TrackerSeq to investigate the lineage origins of cortical astrocyte diversity.
Christian Mayer became a SFARI Investigator. The award, together with a grant from the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation, began on 1 February 2025 and supports the lab’s work on the chromatin regulators ASH1L and SETBP1 in autism.
Our study in Nature Neuroscience examined how MEIS2, DLX5 and LHX6 regulate enhancers in developing inhibitory neurons. The work introduced tCROP-seq.
A collaborative study in Science Advances examined parallel cell lineages in the developing cerebral cortex. We contributed lineage-tracing expertise.
We contributed to a community review in Nature Neuroscience on the design and interpretation of single-cell and single-nucleus studies of the nervous system.
A collaborative study in Science Advances examined how fasting and ghrelin influence gene expression in amygdala neurons and feeding behaviour.
Our review in Current Opinion in Neurobiology discussed the developmental processes that generate inhibitory neuron diversity.
Our study in Nature introduced TrackerSeq to connect cell ancestry with molecular identity and investigate how individual progenitors produce diverse neuron types.