Publications related to Identification and characterization of proteins that protect human telomeres from fragility

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

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

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

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

Inheritance of H3K9 methylation regulates genome architecture in Drosophila early embryos

Fides Zenk

Constitutive heterochromatin is essential for transcriptional silencing and genome integrity. The establishment of constitutive heterochromatin in early embryos and its role in early fruitfly development are unknown. Lysine 9 trimethylation of histone H3 ( ...

Springernature2024

Single-mitosis dissection of acute and chronic DNA mutagenesis and repair

Christina Ernst

How chronic mutational processes and punctuated bursts of DNA damage drive evolution of the cancer genome is poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate a strategy to disentangle and quantify distinct mechanisms underlying genome evolution in single cells, dur ...

Nature Portfolio2024

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

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

Toward universal cell embeddings: integrating single-cell RNA-seq datasets across species with SATURN

Maria Brbic, Ziang Li

Analysis of single-cell datasets generated from diverse organisms offers unprecedented opportunities to unravel fundamental evolutionary processes of conservation and diversification of cell types. However, interspecies genomic differences limit the joint ...

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

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

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

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

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

A Cluster of Evolutionarily Recent KRAB Zinc Finger Proteins Protects Cancer Cells from Replicative Stress–Induced Inflammation

Didier Trono, Priscilla Turelli, Sandra Eloise Kjeldsen, Cyril David Son-Tuyên Pulver, Evaristo Jose Planet Letschert, Filipe Amândio Brandão Sanches Vong Martins, Olga Marie Louise Rosspopoff, Joana Carlevaro Fita, Romain Forey, Florian Huber

Heterochromatin loss and genetic instability enhance cancer progression by favoring clonal diversity, yet uncontrolled replicative stress leads to mitotic catastrophe and inflammatory responses that promote immune rejection. KRAB domain-containing zinc fin ...

2024

Synergetic Support of Cartilage Homeostasis via Coupled Thermal-Hydrostatic Pressure Stimuli

Yanheng Guo

Cartilage homeostasis, crucial for musculoskeletal function, is orchestrated by interconnected biophysical cues. In healthy cartilage, repetitive compressive loading not only elicits a range of mechanical stimuli but also induces a gradual transient temper ...

EPFL2024

HaloTag-Based Tools for Live-Cell Imaging and Elucidation of Organellar Redox Biology

Sarah Emmert

Redox homeostasis is a key factor in maintaining cellular function and health. The main determinant of the intracellular redox potential is ubiquitous glutathione (GSH) together with its oxidized dimer (GSSG). Importantly, both redox equilibrium and GSH ho ...

EPFL2024

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

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

Cyril David Son-Tuyên Pulver

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

Deciphering the nature of cell state transitions in single cells using quantitative modeling of temporal dynamics

Alex Russell Lederer

Cells are the smallest operational units of living systems. Through synthesis of various biomolecules and exchange of signals with the environment, cells tightly regulate their composition to realize a specific functional state. The transformation of a cel ...

EPFL2024

Androgen Receptor Signaling in in vivo models of Estrogen Receptor-positive Breast Cancer and Normal Breast Epithelium

Andrea Agnoletto

Steroid hormone receptors (HRs) are ligand-activated transcription factors that play a pivotal role in breast development and carcinogenesis. It is well established that estrogen receptor (ER) signaling is a major proliferative driver in estrogen receptor ...

EPFL2024