Publications related to Effects of physiological self-crowding of DNA on shape and biological properties of DNA molecules with various levels of supercoiling

Meeting our Makers: Uncovering the cis-regulatory activity of transposable elements using statistical learning

The adaptation of organisms to their environment depends on the innovative potential inherent to genetic variation. In complex organisms such as mammals, processes like development and immunity require tight gene regulation. Complex forms emerge more often ...

EPFL2024

Quantitative characterization of the inorganic phosphate gene regulatory networks in S. cerevisiae and bottom up engineering an orthogonal gene network

Shiyu Cheng

Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) play a crucial role in an organism's response to changing environmental conditions. Cellular behaviors typically result from the integration of multiple gene outputs, and their regulation often demands precise control of num ...

EPFL2024

Resolving bacterial cell biology: from replisome dynamics to cell wall synthesis

Chen Zhang

Bacteria are ubiquitous single cellular organisms. Compared to eukaryotic cells, bacteria have two unique characteristics: the membrane-less nucleoid and the cell wall built of peptidoglycan (PG). In most bacteria, a single circular chromosome is compacted ...

EPFL2024

Chromosome organization shapes replisome dynamics in Caulobacter crescentus

Suliana Manley, Laurent Casini, Chen Zhang

DNA replication in bacteria takes place on highly compacted chromosomes, where segregation, transcription, and repair must occur simultaneously. Within this dynamic environment, colocalization of sister replisomes has been observed in many bacterial specie ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Single-cell epigenomic reconstruction of developmental trajectories from pluripotency in human neural organoid systems

Fides Zenk

Cell fate progression of pluripotent progenitors is strictly regulated, resulting in high human cell diversity. Epigenetic modifications also orchestrate cell fate restriction. Unveiling the epigenetic mechanisms underlying human cell diversity has been di ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Decoding Chromatin Ubiquitylation: A Chemical Biology Perspective

Beat Fierz, Pauline Franz

Since Strahl and Allis proposed the "language of covalent histone modifications", a host of experimental studies have shed light on the different facets of chromatin regulation by epigenetic mechanisms. Initially proposed as a concept for controlling gene ...

Academic Press Ltd- Elsevier Science Ltd2024

The dynamic genetic determinants of increased transcriptional divergence in spermatids

Christina Ernst

Cis-genetic effects are key determinants of transcriptional divergence in discrete tissues and cell types. However, how cis- and trans-effects act across continuous trajectories of cellular differentiation in vivo is poorly understood. Here, we quantify al ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Ancestral genome reconstruction enhances transposable element annotation by identifying degenerate integrants

Didier Trono, Evaristo Jose Planet Letschert, Wayo Matsushima

Growing evidence indicates that transposable elements (TEs) play important roles in evolution by providing genomes with coding and non-coding sequences. Identification of TE-derived functional elements, however, has relied on TE annotations in individual s ...

2024

Molecular mechanism of plasmid elimination by the DdmDE defense system

Melanie Blokesch, Sandrine Stutzmann, David William Adams, Laurie Righi

Seventh pandemic Vibrio cholerae strains contain two pathogenicity islands that encode the DNA defense modules DdmABC and DdmDE. Here we use cryogenic electron microscopy to reveal the mechanistic basis for plasmid defense by DdmDE. A structure of the DdmD ...

American Association for the Advancement of Science2024

Formaldehyde regulates one-carbon metabolism and epigenetics

Yimon Aye

Recently, Pham et al. used an array of model systems to uncover a role for the enzyme methionine adenosyltransferase (MAT) -1A, which is mainly expressed in liver, in both sensing formaldehyde and regulating transcriptional responses that protect against i ...

Cell Press2024

A chemical biology approach to decipher chromatin ubiquitylation by RNF168

Pauline Franz

DNA damage signaling following DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) involves numerous regulating proteins, which dynamically recognize ('read') and alter ('write' or 'erase') histone post-translational modifications (PTMs). Among these PTMs, the ubiquitin syste ...

EPFL2024

Oxidative Defect Detection Within Free and Packed DNA Systems: A Quantum Mechanical/Molecular Mechanics (QM/ MM) Approach

Ursula Röthlisberger

Base excision repair enzymes (BERs) detect and repair oxidative DNA damage with efficacy despite the small size of the defects and their often only minor structural impact. A charge transfer (CT) model for rapid scanning of DNA stretches has been evoked to ...

Swiss Chemical Soc2024

Anti-miR-873-5p improves alcohol-related liver disease by enhancing hepatic deacetylation via SIRT1

Kristina Schoonjans, Petar Petrov

Background & Aims: Current therapies for the treatment of alcohol-related liver disease (ALD) have proven largely ineffective. Patients relapse and the disease progresses even after liver transplantation. Altered epigenetic mechanisms are characteristic of ...

Elsevier2024

The autism susceptibility kinase, TAOK2, phosphorylates eEF2 and modulates translation

Nagammal Neelagandan

Genes implicated in translation control have been associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). However, some important genetic causes of autism, including the 16p11.2 microdeletion, bear no obvious connection to translation. Here, we use proteomics, g ...

Amer Assoc Advancement Science2024

Multi-well plate lid for single-step pooling of 96 samples for high-throughput barcode-based sequencing

Bart Deplancke, Daniel Migliozzi, Hüseyin Baris Atakan, Mustafa Demir, Riccardo Dainese, Daniel Alpern, Dariia Gudkova, Gilles Weder

High-throughput transcriptomics is of increasing fundamental biological and clinical interest. The generation of molecular data from large collections of samples, such as biobanks and drug libraries, is boosting the development of new biomarkers and treatm ...

Springer2024

Chromatin modules and their implication in genomic organization and gene regulation

Bart Deplancke, Judith Franziska Kribelbauer, Guido Van Mierlo

Regulation of gene expression is a complex but highly guided process. While genomic technologies and computational approaches have allowed high-throughput mapping of cis-regulatory elements (CREs) and their interactions in 3D, their precise role in regulat ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE LONDON2023

Statistical learning quantifies transposable element-mediated cis-regulation

Didier Trono, Julien Léonard Duc, Alexandre Coudray, Cyril David Son-Tuyên Pulver, Shaoline Sheppard, Evaristo Jose Planet Letschert, Raphaël Gérard Théodore Michel Marie de Deloÿe et Fourcade de Fondeville, Julien Paul André Pontis, Delphine Yvette L Grun

Background: Transposable elements (TEs) have colonized the genomes of most metazoans, and many TE-embedded sequences function as cis-regulatory elements (CREs) for genes involved in a wide range of biological processes from early embryo- genesis to innate ...

2023

The THO complex counteracts TERRA R-loop-mediated telomere fragility in telomerase(+) cells and telomeric recombination in ALT(+) cells

Joachim Lingner, Rita Valador Fernandes

Telomeres are the nucleoprotein structures at the ends of linear chromosomes. Telomeres are transcribed into long non-coding Telomeric Repeat-Containing RNA (TERRA), whose functions rely on its ability to associate with telomeric chromatin. The conserved T ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS2023

Telomere protection against oxidative stress

Thu Trang Nguyen

Telomeres are nucleoprotein structures at the ends of linear chromosomes, being essential for the maintenance of genomic integrity. Telomeres have a unique structure which distinguishes chromosome termini from DNA damage sites. Shelterin complexes are the ...

EPFL2023

Regulation and impact of TERRA R-loops at human telomeres

Rita Valador Fernandes

Telomeres are the nucleoprotein structures found at the ends of linear chromosomes. They ensure that the termini of chromosomes are not inappropriately recognized as sites of DNA damage, and are therefore crucial for genome stability. In spite of the heter ...

EPFL2023