During development, cells specialise by turning gene expression programs on or off in response to signals. Cis-regulatory elements precisely control these programs but are hard to identify or predict from sequence. Our research aims to uncover how the non-coding genome regulates cell fate, using the developing spinal cord as a model and combining embryology, genomics, proteomics, and computational approaches to link cis-regulatory mechanisms to developmental outcomes.
Our principal funders
Selected publications
Zhang I, et al (2025). The cis-regulatory logic integrating spatial and temporal patterning in the vertebrate neural tube. Developmental Cell. doi.org/10.1016/j.devcel.2025.06.029
Delás MJ, et al (2023). Developmental cell fate choice in neural tube progenitors employs two distinct cis-regulatory strategies. Developmental Cell. doi.org/10.1016/j.devcel.2022.11.016
Cornwall-Scoones et al (2025) Predictable Engineering of Signal-Dependent Cis-Regulatory Elements. Biorxiv doi:10.1101/2025.03.07.642002
Fontaine M, Delás MJ et al (2025) Dynamic Landscape Analysis of Cell Fate Decisions: Predictive Models of Neural Development From Single-Cell Data. Biorxiv doi:10.1101/2025.05.28.656648
Blassberg R, et al (2022.) Sox2 levels regulate the chromatin occupancy of WNT mediators in epiblast progenitors responsible for vertebrate body formation. Nat Cell Biol 24, 633–644 (2022). doi.org/10.1038/s41556-022-00910-2
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Delas Lab
Click to email. j.delas@ucl.ac.uk