Simon Andrews

Simon Andrews did his first degree in Microbiology at the University of Warwick. After a breif period working for Sandoz pharmaceuticals he went on to do a PhD in protein engineering a the University of Newcastle with Harry Gilbert. During his PhD his interests moved from bench work toward the emerging field of bioinformatics, and he decided to follow this direction in his future career.

After completing his PhD Simon worked with the BBSRC IT Services where he developed and then presented a series of bioinformatics training courses in protein structure analysis to the BBSRC institutes. At one of these courses at Babraham he met John Coadwell who establised the Babraham bioinformatics group and was then employed as the second member of the bioinformatics team. Since joining Babraham Simon has seen the group grow from two people to nine as the field has become far more prominent in the biological research community. He took over the running of the group in 2010.

Latest Publications

Ageing affects DNA methylation drift and transcriptional cell-to-cell variability in mouse muscle stem cells.
Hernando-Herraez I, Evano B, Stubbs T, Commere PH, Jan Bonder M, Clark S, Andrews S, Tajbakhsh S, Reik W

Age-related tissue alterations have been associated with a decline in stem cell number and function. Although increased cell-to-cell variability in transcription or epigenetic marks has been proposed to be a major hallmark of ageing, little is known about the molecular diversity of stem cells during ageing. Here we present a single cell multi-omics study of mouse muscle stem cells, combining single-cell transcriptome and DNA methylome profiling. Aged cells show a global increase of uncoordinated transcriptional heterogeneity biased towards genes regulating cell-niche interactions. We find context-dependent alterations of DNA methylation in aged stem cells. Importantly, promoters with increased methylation heterogeneity are associated with increased transcriptional heterogeneity of the genes they drive. These results indicate that epigenetic drift, by accumulation of stochastic DNA methylation changes in promoters, is associated with the degradation of coherent transcriptional networks during stem cell ageing. Furthermore, our observations also shed light on the mechanisms underlying the DNA methylation clock.

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Nature communications, 10, 2041-1723, 4361, 2019

PMID: 31554804

DNA methylation and mRNA expression of imprinted genes in blastocysts derived from an improved in vitro maturation method for oocytes from small antral follicles in polycystic ovary syndrome patients.
Saenz-de-Juano MD, Ivanova E, Romero S, Lolicato F, Sánchez F, Van Ranst H, Krueger F, Segonds-Pichon A, De Vos M, Andrews S, Smitz J, Kelsey G, Anckaert E

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Human reproduction (Oxford, England), 34, 1460-2350, 1640-1649, 2019

PMID: 31398248

RNA proximity sequencing reveals the spatial organization of the transcriptome in the nucleus.
Morf J, Wingett SW, Farabella I, Cairns J, Furlan-Magaril M, Jiménez-García LF, Liu X, Craig FF, Walker S, Segonds-Pichon A, Andrews S, Marti-Renom MA, Fraser P

The global, three-dimensional organization of RNA molecules in the nucleus is difficult to determine using existing methods. Here we introduce Proximity RNA-seq, which identifies colocalization preferences for pairs or groups of nascent and fully transcribed RNAs in the nucleus. Proximity RNA-seq is based on massive-throughput RNA barcoding of subnuclear particles in water-in-oil emulsion droplets, followed by cDNA sequencing. Our results show RNAs of varying tissue-specificity of expression, speed of RNA polymerase elongation and extent of alternative splicing positioned at varying distances from nucleoli. The simultaneous detection of multiple RNAs in proximity to each other distinguishes RNA-dense from sparse compartments. Application of Proximity RNA-seq will facilitate study of the spatial organization of transcripts in the nucleus, including non-coding RNAs, and its functional relevance.

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Nature biotechnology, 37, 1546-1696, 793-802, 2019

PMID: 31267103