Publications related to Genome size

The cost of adaptability: resource availability constrains functional stability under pulsed disturbances

Global change exposes ecosystems to changes in the frequency, magnitude, and concomitancy of disturbances, which impact the composition and functioning of these systems. Here, we experimentally evaluate the effects of salinity disturbances and eutrophicati ...

Amer Soc Microbiology2024

Reconstruction and analysis of genome-scale metabolic networks in single organisms and microbial communities

Evangelia Vagena

Microorganisms are a key component in the chain of life. They are essential for agriculture, produce a large proportion of oxygen, and play a central role in the cycle of elements. Microorganisms are widely used in the production of food and alcoholic beve ...

EPFL2024

The microbial genomics of glacier-fed streams: adaptations to an extreme ecosystem

Massimo Bourquin

Glacier-fed streams are the cold, ultra-oligotrophic, and unstable streams that are fed by glacial meltwater. Despite these extreme conditions, they harbour a diverse and abundant microbial diversity that develops into biofilms, covering the boulders and s ...

EPFL2024

Landscapes of DNA Mechanics and Genomes

Thomas Antonin Zwahlen

The local physical properties - such as shape and flexibility - of the DNA double-helix is today widely believed to be influenced by nucleic acid sequence in a non-trivial way. Furthermore, there is strong evidence that these properties play a role in many ...

EPFL2023

PSGL-1 is an evolutionarily conserved antiviral restriction factor

Ying Liu, Chao Jiang

The arms race between viruses and their hosts shaped the evolutionary history and the genome composition of both parties. Restriction factors are the first-line antiviral effectors encoded by the host genomes and are often conserved through evolution to pr ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2023

Development of multiplexed single-molecule imaging techniques to study chromatin invasion dynamics of chromatin effector proteins

Kristina Makasheva

DNA-binding proteins physically interact with the DNA and directly affect genomic functions. The eukaryotic genome is compacted into chromatin, limiting the DNA access to nuclear factors. In this Ph.D. thesis, I explored the dynamic mechanisms, that allow ...

EPFL2023

Individual and combined benefits of different nonequilibrium proofreading mechanisms

Paolo De Los Rios, Daniel Maria Busiello, Stefano Zamuner, Adélaïde Alice Mohr

Genome duplication, transcription, and translation are among many crucial cellular processes that need to be performed with high fidelity. However, those extremely low error rates cannot be explained with simple equilibrium thermodynamic considerations. Th ...

Amer Physical Soc2023

Cis-regulatory effect of HPV integration is constrained by host chromatin architecture in cervical cancers

Daniele Tavernari, Giovanni Ciriello

Human papillomavirus (HPV) infections are the primary drivers of cervical cancers, and often HPV DNA gets integrated into the host genome. Although the oncogenic impact of HPV encoded genes is relatively well known, the cis-regulatory effect of integrated ...

Wiley2023

Secondary structure of the human mitochondrial genome affects formation of deletions

Jacques Fellay, Konstantin Popadin

BackgroundAging in postmitotic tissues is associated with clonal expansion of somatic mitochondrial deletions, the origin of which is not well understood. Such deletions are often flanked by direct nucleotide repeats, but this alone does not fully explain ...

BMC2023

Whole genome doubling promotes tumorigenesis through loss of chromatin segregation and compartment repositioning

Ruxandra-Andreea Lambuta

Whole genome doubling (WGD) events are drivers of genetic innovation across vertebrate evolution. While generally detrimental to mammalian organisms, WGDs are crucial in the development of various plants and fungi, as well as for the terminal differentiati ...

EPFL2023

Energy-harnessing problem solving of primordial life: Modeling the emergence of catalytic host-nested parasite life cycles

Christian Iseli

All life forms on earth ultimately descended from a primordial population dubbed the last universal common ancestor or LUCA via Darwinian evolution. Extant living systems share two salient functional features, a metabolism extracting and transforming energ ...

2023

Disentangle genus microdiversity within a complex microbial community by using a multi-distance long-read binning method: example of Candidatus Accumulibacter

Christof Holliger, Julien Maillard, Aline Sondra Adler, Marco Pagni, Simon Marius Jean Poirier

Complete genomes can be recovered from metagenomes by assembling and binning DNA sequences into metagenome assembled genomes (MAGs). Yet, the presence of microdiversity can hamper the assembly and binning processes, possibly yielding chimeric, highly fragm ...

WILEY2022

A systematic CRISPR approach to understanding the role of Drosophila antimicrobial peptides in immunity in vivo

Mark Austin Hanson

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are host-encoded antibiotics that combat invading microbes. These short immune effectors are conserved in plants, animals, and fungi. Early work showed that AMPs killed bacteria in generalist fashions in vitro: i.e. AMPs that ...

EPFL2022

A mitochondria-specific mutational signature of aging: increased rate of A > G substitutions on the heavy strand

Jacques Fellay, Konstantin Popadin, Dmitrii Iliushchenko, Stepan Denisov

The mutational spectrum of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) does not resemble any of the known mutational signatures of the nuclear genome and variation in mtDNA mutational spectra between different organisms is still incomprehensible. Since mitochondria are ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS2022

Using population-specific add-on polymorphisms to improve genotype imputation in underrepresented populations

Jacques Fellay, Zhi Ming Xu, Sina Rüeger

Genome-wide association studies rely on the statistical inference of untyped variants, called imputation, to increase the coverage of genotyping arrays. However, the results are often suboptimal in populations underrepresented in existing reference panels ...

Public Library Science2022

Essential role of Cp190 in physical and regulatory boundary formation

Nicolas Jean Philippe Guex, Julien Dorier, Christian Iseli

Boundaries in animal genomes delimit contact domains with enhanced internal contact frequencies and have debated functions in limiting regulatory cross-talk between domains and guiding enhancers to target promoters. Most mammalian boundaries form by stalli ...

2022

Dynamics of the most common pathogenic mtDNA variant m.3243A > G demonstrate frequency-dependency in blood and positive selection in the germline

Konstantin Popadin

The A-to-G point mutation at position 3243 in the human mitochondrial genome (m.3243A > G) is the most common pathogenic mtDNA variant responsible for disease in humans. It is widely accepted that m.3243A > G levels decrease in blood with age, and an age c ...

Oxford University Press2022

Multiplexed Single-Molecule Experiments Reveal Nucleosome Invasion Dynamics of the Cas9 Genome Editor

Beat Fierz, Louise Catherine Bryan, Kristina Makasheva

Single-molecule measurements provide detailed mechanistic insights into molecular processes, for example in genome regulation where DNA access is controlled by nucleosomes and the chromatin machinery. However, real-time single-molecule observations of nucl ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2021

CTCF loss has limited effects on global genome architecture in Drosophila despite critical regulatory functions

Christian Iseli, Nicolas Jean Philippe Guex, Julien Dorier, Flavia Marzetta

Vertebrate genomes are partitioned into contact domains defined by enhanced internal contact frequency and formed by two principal mechanisms: compartmentalization of transcriptionally active and inactive domains, and stalling of chromosomal loop-extruding ...

Nature Research2021

KRAB zinc finger protein-mediated control of transposon-embedded regulatory sequences from human germline to early embryos

Alexandra Iouranova

Transposable elements (TEs), also called jumping genes, are genetic elements capable of changing their position within the genome of their host. They make up large fractions of genomes, including 45% of human DNA content, according to current estimates. S ...

EPFL2021