Olga Rosspopoff /new team – official start in May/June 2026

Presentation
Projects

Olga Rosspopoff /new team – official start in May/June 2026

DEPARTMENT

My research focuses on how regulatory novelty emerges during evolution and how it is integrated into developmental gene regulatory networks (GRNs). I study rapidly evolving genomic components, in particular transposable elements (TEs) and KRAB zinc finger proteins (KZFPs), and how their interactions shape species-specific gene regulation. During my PhD, I investigated how long non-coding RNAs contribute to regulatory plasticity during X chromosome inactivation, demonstrating how evolutionary divergence can be embedded within core developmental processes.
During my postdoctoral work, I showed that TEs and KZFPs form co-evolving regulatory modules that actively sculpt transcriptional networks during mammalian development, rather than acting solely as passive genomic remnants.
Together, my past work established that evolutionary young genomic elements can act as functional drivers of regulatory innovation.

Current projects

The EvoBluePrint lab aims to understand how evolutionarily dynamic elements are deployed during the earliest stages of embryogenesis, with a particular focus on cell fate specification. The lab investigates how regulatory sequences derived from TEs are selectively engaged across developmental time and across lineages, and how KZFPs modulate their activity to ensure robust, lineage-appropriate gene expression. By combining comparative genomics, epigenomics, and single-cell approaches, the lab seeks to dissect how conserved developmental programs are reconfigured by species-specific GRNs, and how the balance between innovation and developmental robustness is maintained during development.

Future perspectives.

The EvoBluePrint lab’s research program aims to understand how TEs contribute to the organization of GRNs, and how these mechanisms support the maintenance of gene expression programs in humans. Identifying these mechanisms is a major bottleneck, limiting our understanding of human biology and hindering translation from animal models to the clinic. In particular, the lab addresses how the cis-regulatory activity of TEs is selectively deployed during human embryonic development to structure developmental GRNs and, in the longer term, how dysregulation of TE-associated GRNs could affect tissue homeostasis in pathological contexts involving TE reactivation.

Link to lab website : https://orspf.github.io/Rosspopoff.Lab.io/

Publications

Milovanović, D., Duc, J., Matsushima, W., Hamelin, R., Planet, E., Offner, S., Rosspopoff, O.†*, and Trono, D.†* (2026). Tissue-specific restriction of transposon-derived regulatory elements safeguards cell-type identity. Cell Reports 45, 116817. doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2025.116817.

* Corresponding author, † Last author

Rosspopoff, O.#*, Milovanović, D., Offner, S., Raclot, C., Lau, K., Duhoo, Y., Duc, J., Planet, E., Damery, C., Begnis, M., et al. (2025). Transposable element co-option drives transcription factor neofunctionalization. Preprint at bioRxiv, doi.org/10.1101/2025.03.01.640934. In revision.

# First author, *Corresponding author.

Martins, F., Rosspopoff, O.§, Carlevaro-Fita, J., Forey, R., Offner, S., Planet, E., Pulver, C., Pak, H., Huber, F., Michaux, J., et al. (2024). A Cluster of Evolutionarily Recent KRAB Zinc Finger Proteins Protects Cancer Cells from Replicative Stress–Induced Inflammation. Cancer Research 84, 808–826. doi.org/10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-23-1237.

§ Second author

Rosspopoff, O.#, Cazottes, E., Huret, C., Loda, A., Collier, A.J., Casanova, M., Rugg-Gunn, P.J., Heard, E., Ouimette, J.-F., and Rougeulle, C. (2023). Species-specific regulation of XIST by the JPX/FTX orthologs. Nucleic Acids Research 51, 2177–2194. doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkad029.

# First author

Rosspopoff, O.#, Trono, D., and Feschotte, C. (2025). Mix-and-match between transposable elements and zinc finger proteins fuels genic and regulatory innovation. Current Opinion in Genetics & Development 95, 102414. doi.org/10.1016/j.gde.2025.102414.

# First author

Rosspopoff, O.#, and Trono, D. (2023). Take a walk on the KRAB side. Trends in Genetics 39, 844–857. doi.org/10.1016/j.tig.2023.08.003.

# First author

Rosspopoff, O.#, Martins, F., and Trono, D. (2023). New ingredients for old recipes. Nature Genetics 55, 2023–2024. doi.org/10.1038/s41588-023-01591-9.

# First author