There are 377 Krüppel-associated box (KRAB) domain-containing zinc finger proteins (KZFPs) in the human genome, making them the largest family of transcription factors. KZFPs are defined by a N-terminal KRAB domain and several zinc-finger domains arranged ...
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most frequent neurodegenerative disease with an increasing prevalence in industrialized, aging populations. AD susceptibility has an established genetic basis which has been the focus of a large number of genome-wide associa ...
Contemporary genomic approaches allow us to seek answers to biological questions that were previously out of reach. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous genetic polymorphisms associated with human diseases, providing new insight ...
SARS-CoV-2 infected a large fraction of humans in the past 2 years. The clinical presentation of acute infection varies greatly between individuals, ranging from asymptomatic or mild to life-threatening COVID-19 pneumonia with multi-organ complications. De ...
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 ...
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 ...
The study of insular populations was key in the development of evolutionary theory. The successful colonisation of an island depends on the geographic context, and specific characteristics of the organism and the island, but also on stochastic processes. A ...
The focus of the work presented in this thesis is the exploration of the genetic architecture of complex human traits - at the dawn of genomic medicine.The underlying mechanisms explaining the enormously polygenic nature of most human complex traits are ...
