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Dr. (rer. nat.) 🧠 Neuronal gene regulation 🔬 Non-coding RNAs and synaptic plasticity 👩‍🔬Chilean scientist in Germany | She/Her

Really proud to have contributed to this collaboration 🧠✨ Check out! @lstrngr.bsky.social cool new tool!

🚨In our new preprint we show that miRNAs act within a precise temporal window to control cell fate decisions in the human forebrain. 🧠 A study of miRNA expression dynamics and functions during early human brain development. @mdc-bimsb.bsky.social ‬ Check it out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Thank you to @dailyneuron.bsky.social for this nice piece about our work on Cdr1as and RNA networks in the brain. dailyneuron.com/circular-rna...

🚨 Our new review is out! What makes a circular RNA actually functional? We revisit Cdr1as/ciRS-7, one of the most studied circular RNAs, and bring together 15+ years of work to understand what makes it functionally unique. Check it out here 👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Evidence suggests that transcriptionally similar cells can be functionally diverse go.nature.com/3N4lT2d

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are key post-transcriptional regulators of cell state transitions, yet their function in early human brain development is largely unknown. Here, we present a longitudinal analysis of miRNA function in developing human forebrain organoids. We show that mRNAs and miRNAs expression mirrors known developmental gene programs and that miRNA biogenesis peaks at neural commitment. To test the function of miRNAs in regulating commitment, we impaired their biogenesis at defined stages. miRNA disruption during pre-neuronal commitment caused severe patterning defects, whereas post-commitment perturbation had minimal impact on forebrain identity. We show that miRNA loss during pre-commitment increased WNT and BMP signaling, thus shifting cell fates towards non-forebrain identity such as midbrain/hindbrain. These effects could be partially rescued by expressing five miRNAs. Our findings uncover a critical time window where miRNAs regulate morphogen signaling in early human neurodevelopment, establishing them as essential temporal determinants of cell fate and brain regional identity. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

"we propose that the protoribosome was a parasite (...). If this view is correct, then like the spliceosome in the stem eukaryote, a repurposed host-parasite interaction led to a dramatic change in cell biology at the base of the tree of life, in this case leading to the exit from an RNA world"

Inside every mammal brain sits a small ring of genetic code biologists called junk for forty years. They were wrong about what it does.

In this paper, the authors review how the circular RNA Cdr1as and its interacting non-coding RNAs regulate neuronal stress responses and synaptic activity, highlighting general principles of RNA-based...

Transcriptionally similar neurons can be functionally diverse.

New paper! How do RNAs "know" where to go inside a cell? We dug into the sequence elements that route RNAs to the right place. It turns out that, in mammals, they're surprisingly massive (>200 nt), multipartite, and wonderfully complicated. 🧵

Whats most exciting: In a Xenium mouse brain dataset we predicted four GABAergic markers (Gad1, Gad2, Hapln1, Kcnmb2) to co-localize in neuronal projections. Experimental validation confirmed our predictions. (Col19a1 is used as negative control bellow)