Kerstin Ludwig

Kerstin Ludwig

@kuludwig.bsky.social

Group leader at University of Bonn, studying the genomics of birth defects and infectious diseases.

227 followers243 following27 posts

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Kerstin Ludwig reposted

Our paper on the newest version of the Registry of candidate cis-Regulatory Elements (cCREs) is out 🧬 Huge thanks to the many collaborators, experimentalists, analysts and software developers who made this work possible — truly a team effort! A "meme-torial" of the science is coming soon 👀

nature.comAn expanded registry of candidate cis-regulatory elements - NatureThe existing ENCODE registry of candidate human and mouse cis-regulatory elements is expanded with the addition of new ENCODE data, integrating new functional data as well as new cell and tissue types...

Congratulations!! Exciting news and super well deserved! 🥳🥳🥳

🏆 Anna Aschenbrenner from DZNE has been awarded the Tobias-Welte Prize by the German Sepsis Society, which recognizes outstanding achievements in sepsis and infection research. The prize honors her innovative work published in Cell. Read more about the study: www.immunosensation.de/news/scienti...

I finally made (it on) my first cover 🤣 🥳!! Congratulations to @hggadvances.bsky.social, and all my fellow co-editors, for establishing a great genomics journal. And to all authors: if your manuscript still needs a home, consider submitting with us. We would be delighted to handle your paper 🫶 💪.

Human Genetics and Genomics Advances@hggadvances.bsky.social

Our October issue is online! Check out the amazing cover from @comfortandadam.bsky.social to commemorate 5 YEARS of HGG Advances! www.cell.com/hgg-advances...

Kerstin Ludwig reposted

Very exciting preprint by @axel-schmidt.bsky.social, @kuludwig.bsky.social and team! Check out Kerstin's thread for overview

Kerstin Ludwig@kuludwig.bsky.social

🔔Paper alert! Extremely excited to share a preprint from our lab! Spearheaded by @axel-schmidt.bsky.social, a super talented medical & computational geneticist, we studied latent Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection at population-scale. Interested in how this works & what we found? Read along! 👇

🔔Paper alert! Extremely excited to share a preprint from our lab! Spearheaded by @axel-schmidt.bsky.social, a super talented medical & computational geneticist, we studied latent Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection at population-scale. Interested in how this works & what we found? Read along! 👇

medRxivpreprint@medrxivpreprint.bsky.social

Host control of latent Epstein-Barr virus infection https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.19.25331823v1

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🔔Paper alert! Extremely excited to share a preprint from our lab! Spearheaded by @axel-schmidt.bsky.social, a super talented medical & computational geneticist, we studied latent Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection at population-scale. Interested in how this works & what we found? Read along! 👇

medRxivpreprint@medrxivpreprint.bsky.social

Host control of latent Epstein-Barr virus infection https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.19.25331823v1

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There is much more to explore in the paper - just give it a read! Our systematic exploration of host-EBV interaction during latency will help to better understand EBV-associated diseases, identify molecular drug targets and fuel the identification of novel IEIs.

🔔Paper alert! Extremely excited to share a preprint from our lab! Spearheaded by @axel-schmidt.bsky.social, a super talented medical & computational geneticist, we studied latent Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection at population-scale. Interested in how this works & what we found? Read along! 👇

medRxivpreprint@medrxivpreprint.bsky.social

Host control of latent Epstein-Barr virus infection https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.19.25331823v1

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Aggregating the common variants into risk scores, we found that a genetically-predicted EBVread+ based on MHC-I HLA alleles was associated with higher risk of Multiple Sclerosis (driven by HLA-A*02:01), while that of MHC-II HLA alleles was associated with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA).

Additional associations were found with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D), Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) and hypothyroidism, some of which (RA & T1D) even got further support from Mendelian Randomization.

🔔Paper alert! Extremely excited to share a preprint from our lab! Spearheaded by @axel-schmidt.bsky.social, a super talented medical & computational geneticist, we studied latent Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection at population-scale. Interested in how this works & what we found? Read along! 👇

medRxivpreprint@medrxivpreprint.bsky.social

Host control of latent Epstein-Barr virus infection https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.19.25331823v1

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Turning to genetics, a GWAS for EBVread+ in UKB identified striking associations at the MHC region, plus 27 loci outside of MHC, most of which were replicated in AoU. Genes at associated loci include ERAP2, CTLA4, CD70.

🔔Paper alert! Extremely excited to share a preprint from our lab! Spearheaded by @axel-schmidt.bsky.social, a super talented medical & computational geneticist, we studied latent Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection at population-scale. Interested in how this works & what we found? Read along! 👇

medRxivpreprint@medrxivpreprint.bsky.social

Host control of latent Epstein-Barr virus infection https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.19.25331823v1

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Exploring which non-genetic factors determine EBVread+, we found strong associations with HIV infection & immunosuppression. When affected individuals were excluded, additional contributors were current (but not former) smoking, male sex, age, GS yield and, interestingly, seasonal time of sampling.

🔔Paper alert! Extremely excited to share a preprint from our lab! Spearheaded by @axel-schmidt.bsky.social, a super talented medical & computational geneticist, we studied latent Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection at population-scale. Interested in how this works & what we found? Read along! 👇

medRxivpreprint@medrxivpreprint.bsky.social

Host control of latent Epstein-Barr virus infection https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.19.25331823v1

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EBV persists lifelong in B cells - allowing it to be captured as part of genome sequencing (GS) of human blood. Such reads are usually discarded, but we extracted them for all individuals of UK Biobank (UKB). During extensive QC, we identified and removed ca. 50 library plates contaminated with EBV

We detected EBVreads in 16.2% of 486,315 UKB participants, and this measure (=EBVread+) showed a high specificity when compared to serology data that is available of a subset of individuals. Similar read distributions were obtained in the analysis of 336,123 blood-based GS in All of Us (AoU).

🔔Paper alert! Extremely excited to share a preprint from our lab! Spearheaded by @axel-schmidt.bsky.social, a super talented medical & computational geneticist, we studied latent Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection at population-scale. Interested in how this works & what we found? Read along! 👇

medRxivpreprint@medrxivpreprint.bsky.social

Host control of latent Epstein-Barr virus infection https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.19.25331823v1

EBV is a DNA-virus of major relevance to human health - it is associated with several autoimmune diseases and cancers. Ca. 95% of the adult population has been infected with EBV, mostly without any symptoms, which makes it hard to be studied by serology.

Kerstin Ludwig reposted

🚨 Most variant screens measure growth or abundance. What do they miss? That variants impact a spectrum of protein and cellular phenotypes. Variant in situ sequencing (VIS-seq) finds what’s missing: image cells 🔬 first, decode later, revealing multi-scale phenotypes for thousands of variants.👇 1/9

Kerstin Ludwig reposted

So exciting - congratulations!!! 💐🎊👍

Mass Lab@masslab.bsky.social

We are SO EXCITED to share our story @nature.com: 🧵1/ Maternal obesity reprograms fetal liver macrophages, triggering adult fatty liver disease in the offspring. This study uncovers how Kupffer cells act as intergenerational messengers in metabolic disease. 👉 Read here: rdcu.be/erD3b

Congratulations, this sounds awesome! Looking forward to get this data presented live when you visit us in Bonn forward our Summer School 🎊🤣 @immunosens.bsky.social

Daniel Ibrahim@danielibrahim.bsky.social

How to find Evolutionary Conserved Enhancers in 2025? 🐣-🐭 Check out our paper - fresh off the press!!! We find widespread functional conservation of enhancers in absence of sequence homology Including: a bioinformatic tool to map sequence-diverged enhancers! rdcu.be/enVDN github.com/tobiaszehnde...

Kerstin Ludwig reposted

Justified standing ovation for Nobel laureate Katalin Karikó at #ESHG2025 She shared her adventurous scientific life and life lessons like "If you want to do something, you find a way. If not, you find excuses", and reminded us scientists to thank our near and dear because "they suffer a little bit"

Congratulations to everyone involved! 🎊💐

Universität Bonn@unibonn.bsky.social

We are excellent! What a day - between hugs, applause and a lot of pride. Our rector? Jumping for joy. Our team? Overjoyed. Thank you to everyone who made this historic moment possible! @dependencybonn.de @immunosens.bsky.social @econtribute.bsky.social © V. Lannert/G. Hübl/Uni Bonn

Kerstin Ludwig reposted

Kerstin Ludwig reposted

Kerstin Ludwig reposted

Kerstin Ludwig reposted

Modern GWAS can identify 1000s of significant hits but it can be hard to turn this into biological insight. What key cellular functions link genetic variation to disease? I'm very excited to present our new work combining associations and Perturb-seq to build interpretable causal graphs! A 🧵

Kerstin Ludwig reposted

Friends and colleagues, I’ve written a book on effective functional genomics study design, which will be available on Amazon in a couple of weeks. Sharing the TOC to spark interest. I hope students and those planning genomics experiments will find it useful! I’ll share updates soon

Kerstin Ludwig reposted

Kerstin Ludwig reposted