Sign in

Seppe De Winter

@seppedewinter.bsky.social
86 followers 111 following 18 posts

Post-doctoral researcher at aertslab VIB-AI KU Leuven. seppedewinter.net

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
Alexandra P @alexanrna.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
1/ 🧬 Happy to share our new preprint on modeling cis-regulatory variation in human brain enhancers across a large Parkinson’s disease cohort: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Details in the thread below:
biorxiv.org
12311
Seppe De Winter @seppedewinter.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Check out our @natmethods.nature.com publication on CREsted, a user-friendly sequence-to-function framework to decipher enhancer codes and design synthetic enhancers! 🦎
031
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
Hannah Dickmänken @hannahdckmnkn.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Paper alert! 💻 How many cells do you need to train reliable deep learning models in regulatory genomics? We asked how data quality, sequencing depth, and dataset size affect training of sequence-to-function models from scATAC-seq. Out now www.nature.com/articles/s41... (details below)
nature.com
Evaluating single-cell ATAC-seq atlasing technologies using sequence-to-function modeling - Nature Communications
Generating high-quality training data for machine learning is costly. Here, authors include sequence-to-function modeling in benchmarking of custom and commercial droplet-based scATAC platforms, and r...
23417
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
Stein Aerts @steinaerts.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
TF-MINDI is out! A new method to learn cis-regulatory codes through rich embeddings of TF binding sites. TF-MINDI decomposes motif neighbourhoods, and works downstream of any sequence-to-function deep learning model. We deeply study the enhancer code in human neural development, check out the thread
16038
Seppe De Winter @seppedewinter.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
We are thrilled to share our new pre-print: “System-wide extraction of cis-regulatory rules from sequence-to-function models in human neural development”. S2F-deeplearning models can accurately encode enhancers, yet decoding these models into human-interpretable rules remains a major challenge.
14521
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
Alexandra P @alexanrna.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
1/ First preprint from @jdemeul.bsky.social lab 🥳! We present our new multi-modal single-cell long-read method SPLONGGET (Single-cell Profiling of LONG-read Genome, Epigenome, and Transcriptome)! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
ikea-style logo of splongget
14817
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
Niklas Kempynck @niklaskemp.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
Check out our work on evaluating methods for predicting in vivo cell enhancer activity in the mouse cortex! Combined, scATAC peak specificity and sequence-based CREsted predictions gave the best predictive performance, aiming to advance genetic tool design for cell targeting in the brain.
cell.com
Evaluating methods for the prediction of cell-type-specific enhancers in the mammalian cortex
Johansen et al. report the results of a community challenge to predict functional enhancers targeting specific brain cell types. By comparing multi-omics machine learning approaches using in vivo data...
12010
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
Stein Aerts @steinaerts.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
One thousand candidate enhancers tested in vivo in the mouse brain! A massive resource and oh so useful as validation set for genome-wide enhancer prediction methods. Super fun to be involved in one of the papers: ‘the prediction challenge paper’ by Nelson&Niklas et al www.cell.com/cell-genomic...
cell.com
Evaluating methods for the prediction of cell-type-specific enhancers in the mammalian cortex
Johansen et al. report the results of a community challenge to predict functional enhancers targeting specific brain cell types. By comparing multi-omics machine learning approaches using in vivo data...
04213
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
Jacob Schreiber @jmschreiber91.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Our preprint on designing and editing cis-regulatory elements using Ledidi is out! Ledidi turns *any* ML model (or set of models) into a designer of edits to DNA sequences that induce desired characteristics. Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... GitHub: github.com/jmschrei/led...
biorxiv.org
Programmatic design and editing of cis-regulatory elements
The development of modern genome editing tools has enabled researchers to make such edits with high precision but has left unsolved the problem of designing these edits. As a solution, we propose Ledi...
211437
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
Stein Aerts @steinaerts.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Very proud of two new preprints from the lab: 1) CREsted: to train sequence-to-function deep learning models on scATAC-seq atlases, and use them to decipher enhancer logic and design synthetic enhancers. This has been a wonderful lab-wide collaborative effort. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
CREsted: modeling genomic and synthetic cell type-specific enhancers across tissues and species
Sequence-based deep learning models have become the state of the art for the analysis of the genomic regulatory code. Particularly for transcriptional enhancers, deep learning models excel at decipher...
510939
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
Hannah Dickmänken @hannahdckmnkn.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Our new preprint is out! We optimized our open-source platform, HyDrop (v2), for scATAC sequencing and generated new atlases for the mouse cortex and Drosophila embryo with 607k cells. Now, we can train sequence-to-function models on data generated with HyDrop v2! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Data collected with the new sequencing platform HyDrop v2 is shown. First, a schematic overview of the bead batches of the microfluidic beads is followed by a tSNE and a barplot showing the costs in comparison to 10x Genomics. 
Then, a track of mouse data (cortex) is shown together with nucleotide contribution scores in the FIRE enhancer in microglia. Here, the HyDrop and 10x based models show the same contributions. 
On the right, the Drosophila embryo collection is explained; in the paper HyDrop v2 and 10x data are compared to sciATAC data. Then, a nucleotide contribution score is also shown, whereas HyDrop v2 and 10x models show the same contribution, just as in mouse.
25525
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
Niklas Kempynck @niklaskemp.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
We released our preprint on the CREsted package. CREsted allows for complete modeling of cell type-specific enhancer codes from scATAC-seq data. We demonstrate CREsted’s robust functionality in various species and tissues, and in vivo validate our findings: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
17538
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
Kaessmann Lab @kaessmannlab.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
How does gene regulation shape brain evolution? Our new preprint dives into this question in the context of mammalian cerebellum development! rb.gy/dbcxjz Led by @ioansarr.bsky.social, @marisepp.bsky.social and @tyamadat.bsky.social, in collaboration with @steinaerts.bsky.social
419270
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
Saez-Rodriguez Group @saezlab.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
📄 Update on our preprint about Gene Regulatory Net (GRN) benchmarking 📄 We have included the original and decoupled version of SCENIC+, added a new metric and two more databases. Dictys and SCENIC+ outperformed others, but still performed poorly in causal mechanistic tasks. doi.org/10.1101/2024... 👇
Performance of multimodal GRN inference methods. SCENIC+ and Dictys outperform others.
25018
Seppe De Winter @seppedewinter.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
We 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...
nature.com
Modelling and design of transcriptional enhancers - Nature Reviews Bioengineering
Enhancers are genomic elements critical for regulating gene expression. In this Review, the authors discuss how sequence-to-function models can be used to unravel the rules underlying enhancer activit...
15732
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
Aligning Science Across Parkinson's @asapresearch.parkinsonsroadmap.org · 13/02/2025
The latest Discover ASAP episode dives into "Cell Type Directed Design of Synthetic Enhancers," a study published in Nature by CRN Team Voet. They discuss how machine learning enables precise enhancer design for targeted gene expression 🧬 Watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qcms...
063
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
VIB.AI @vibai.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
KU Leuven turns 600(!) this year and is celebrating with a public event this weekend! The @steinaerts.bsky.social lab is offering guided lab tours. Want a behind-the-scenes look? All tours on Saturday are full, but you can still register for Sunday! www.kuleuven.be/600years/exp...
kuleuven.be
Explore cellular diversity with microscopy and AI: registration | KU Leuven
031
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
VIB.AI @vibai.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
In a new study, Nikolai Hecker, Niklas Kempynck et al. in the team of @steinaerts.bsky.social explore 300 million years of brain evolution through the lens of enhancer codes. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Enhancer-driven cell type comparison reveals similarities between the mammalian and bird pallium
Combinations of transcription factors govern the identity of cell types, which is reflected by genomic enhancer codes. We used deep learning to characterize these enhancer codes and devised three metr...
1278
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
Stein Aerts @steinaerts.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
This has been a fantastic adventure - to capture the genomic regulatory code underlying brain cell types (using deep learning models trained on chromatin accessibility), and then use these models to compare cell types between the bird and mammalian brain
44112
Reposted by Seppe De Winter
Niklas Kempynck @niklaskemp.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
Just very happy to have our paper out today! A big thanks to all our co-authors, and to Nikolai and @steinaerts.bsky.social for the teamwork over the past years. If you are interested in using our models for cross-species enhancer studies, check out crested.readthedocs.io/en/stable/mo... 🙂
35325