Publications related to Malaria parasites form filamentous cell-to-cell connections during reproduction in the mosquito midgut

Fluorescent fatty acid conjugates for live cell imaging of peroxisomes

Luc Reymond, Manon Sandra Bardyn, Fabien Kuttler, Daria Korotkova, Triana Amen, Milena Maria Schuhmacher

Peroxisomes are eukaryotic organelles that are essential for multiple metabolic pathways, including fatty acid oxidation, degradation of amino acids, and biosynthesis of ether lipids. Consequently, peroxisome dysfunction leads to pediatric-onset neurodegen ...

Nature Research2024

Primary data for EPFL thesis "Characterisation of conditional alleles of the Schizosaccharomyces pombe cytokinesis regulator byr4"

Michael Grüner Vindfeldt

Regulation of cytokinesis is essential for the cell during its division cycle. Failure to do so can lead to aneuploidy, which can be fatal and lead to senescence or cancer. A useful model organism for studying cytokinesis in eukaryotes is Schizosaccharomyc ...

EPFL Infoscience2023

Characterisation of conditional alleles of the Schizosaccharomyces pombe cytokinesis regulator byr4

Michael Grüner Vindfeldt

Regulation of cytokinesis is essential for the cell during its division cycle. Failure to do so can lead to aneuploidy, which can be fatal and lead to senescence or cancer. A useful model organism for studying cytokinesis in eukaryotes is Schizosaccharomyc ...

EPFL2023

Genomics of Preaxostyla Flagellates Illuminates the Path Towards the Loss of Mitochondria

Marek Elias, Shweta Vinodrai Pipaliya

The notion that mitochondria cannot be lost was shattered with the report of an oxymonad Monocercomonoides exilis, the first eukaryote arguably without any mitochondrion. Yet, questions remain about whether this extends beyond the single species and how th ...

Public Library Science2023

Microfluidic device combining hydrodynamic and dielectrophoretic trapping for the controlled contact between single micro-sized objects and application to adhesion assays

Philippe Renaud, Arnaud Bertsch, Clémentine Sophie Sarah Lipp

The understanding of cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions via receptor and ligand binding relies on our ability to study the very first events of their contact. Of particular interest is the interaction between a T cell receptor and its cognate peptide-m ...

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2023

Potent Virustatic Polymer-Lipid Nanomimics Block Viral Entry and Inhibit Malaria Parasites In Vivo

Francesco Stellacci, Matteo Gasbarri

Infectious diseases continue to pose a substantial burden on global populations, requiring innovative broad-spectrum prophylactic and treatment alternatives. Here, we have designed modular synthetic polymer nanopartides that mimic functional components of ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2022

Carbon nanotube uptake in cyanobacteria for near-infrared imaging and enhanced bioelectricity generation in living photovoltaics

Vitalijs Zubkovs, Ardemis Anoush Boghossian, Alessandra Antonucci, Charlotte Elisabeth Marie Roullier, Nils Schürgers, Benjamin Paul Johanès Gabriel Lambert, Alice Judith Gillen, Melania Reggente, Mohammed Mouhib

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) have unique optoelectronic properties that make them suitable for applications ranging from phototherapy to imaging and sensing, but their uptake has mainly been explored in eukaryotic cells. Here the authors explore ...

2022

Structures of SAS-6 coiled coil hold implications for the polarity of the centriolar cartwheel

Pierre Gönczy, Georgios Hatzopoulos

Centrioles are eukaryotic organelles that template the formation of cilia and flagella, as well as organize the microtubule network and the mitotic spindle in animal cells. Centrioles have proximal-distal polarity and a 9 fold radial symmetry imparted by a ...

CELL PRESS2022

Modulation of Subcellular Redox Homeostasis with Trialkylphosphines

Jade Noémie Nam Nguyen

Redox homeostasis is essential for cell function and its disruption is associated with multiple pathologies. Redox balance is largely regulated by the relative concentrations of reduced (GSH) and oxidized (GSSG) glutathione. In eukaryotic cells, this ratio ...

SWISS CHEMICAL SOC2022

Intrinsically High Capacity of Animal Cells From a Symbiotic Cnidarian to Deal With Pro-Oxidative Conditions

Gaëlle Delphine Toullec

The cnidarian-dinoflagellate symbiosis is a mutualistic intracellular association based on the photosynthetic activity of the endosymbiont. This relationship involves significant constraints and requires co-evolution processes, such as an extensive capacit ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2022

Engineering synthetic adhesins for biophysical investigation and rewiring of host-microbe interactions

Xavier Jean-Yves Pierrat

Host attachment is often a critical step in the onset of pathogenesis. To attach to host cells, bacteria have evolved a range of adhesins that bind to specific receptors. Some of these adhesins have been thoroughly characterized using biochemical technique ...

EPFL2022

Engineering Agrobacterium tumefaciens Adhesion to Target Cells

Alexandre Louis André Persat, Xavier Jean-Yves Pierrat, Jeremy Pak Hei Wong, Alix Kim Lan Pham

Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a plant pathogen commonly repurposed for genetic modification of crops. Despite its versatility, it remains inefficient at transferring DNA to many hosts, including to animal cells. Like many pathogens, physical contact between ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2022

Robotic manipulation to investigate the physical principles of biological self-organization

Fazil Emre Uslu

Self-organization is the spontaneous formation of ordered patterns and networks from a population of comparatively simple elements or individuals with no prior information on neither the formation process nor the final organization. While the construction ...

EPFL2022

NICEdrug.ch, a workflow for rational drug design and systems-level analysis of drug metabolism

Vassily Hatzimanikatis, Noushin Hadadi, Jasmin Maria Hafner, Anush Chiappino-Pepe, Homa Mohammadi Peyhani

The discovery of a drug requires over a decade of intensive research and financial investments – and still has a high risk of failure. To reduce this burden, we developed the NICEdrug.ch resource, which incorporates 250,000 bioactive molecules, and studied ...

2021

Analysis and Modeling of the Dynamics of Traction Forces during Cell Polarization and their Role in the Organization of Edge Activity

Zeno Messi

The capacity to break symmetry and organize activity to move directionally is a fundamental property of eukaryotic cells. To explain the organization of cell-edge activity, models commonly rely on front-to-back gradients of functional components or regulat ...

EPFL2021

In Vitro-Evolved Peptides Bind Monomeric Actin and Mimic Actin-Binding Protein Thymosin-β4

Christian Heinis, Davide Bertoldo, Raphael Johannes Gübeli, Jonas Alfred Karl Wilbs, Ganesh Kumar Mothukuri

Actin is the most abundant protein in eukaryotic cells and is key to many cellular functions. The filamentous form of actin (F-actin) can be studied with help of natural products that specifically recognize it, as for example fluorophore-labeled probes of ...

2021

Microfluidics and cell-free synthetic biology in the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic platforms

Grégoire Michielin

In phenylketonuria, absence or malfunction of the phenylalanine hydroxylase enzyme results in toxic accumulation of phenylalanine in the body. An injectable recombinant enzyme therapy was recently approved and has the potential to improve the quality of li ...

EPFL2021

Nanomechanical bio-sensing for fast and reliable detection of viability and susceptibility of microorganisms

Giovanni Dietler, Raphaël Foschia, Sandor Kasas, María Inés Villalba, Leonardo Venturelli

The metabolic activity of living organisms results in cellular motion on a nanometric scale that can be efficiently detected by micro- and nano- fabricated sensors. Quartz crystal microbalance and atomic force microscopy (AFM) inspired techniques have rece ...

2021

Disruption of mitochondrial redox homeostasis by enzymatic activation of a trialkylphosphine probe

Jade Noémie Nam Nguyen, Pablo Rivera Fuentes

Redox homeostasis is essential for cell function and its disruption is associated with multiple pathologies. Redox balance is largely regulated by the relative concentrations of reduced and oxidized glutathione. In eukaryotic cells, this ratio is different ...

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2021

Optimization methods and objective functions for analysis of metabolic network models

Zhaleh Hosseini

Computational studies of metabolism aim to systematically analyze the metabolic behaviour of biological systems in different conditions. Genome-scale metabolic network models (GEMs) capture the connection between elements of the network by applying stoichi ...

EPFL2020