Seminar

How genome stability is monitored across generations of different cellular lineages remains an open question, and the current focus of the Acebron lab

Sergio Acebrón

We recently revealed that several developmental signals oversee genome maintenance during pluripotency, with important implications to understand how mosaicism arises in peri-implantation embryos: the leading cause of miscarriage. We also uncovered a tug-of-war between brain patterning signals that triggers genomic mosaicism during neurogenesis, which could provide a rationale for the high levels of mosaicism in the human brain (Bufe et al., PNAS 2021, Habib & Acebrón Trends Cell Biol 2022; De Jaime et al., Nature Comm 2024, van den Berg Nature Methods 2024). We currently explore the roles of the niche signals in ensuring stem cell resilience, and decipher how tumour microenvironment rewiring drives genome evolution in cancer. To that end, we leverage single-cell and population OMICs (scG&T-seq, scEDU-seq, sci-seq, INDUCE-seq), live imaging, novel biosensors (Smarduch et al., EMBO J 2025), genome-editing and molecular analyses in 2D/3D stem cell models of development, physiology and disease, including organoids.