Publication

Challenging endings: How telomeres prevent fragility

Publications associées (31)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preomic profile of BxPC-3 cells after treatment with BRC4

Andrea Cavalli

BRCA2 and RAD51 are two proteins that play a central role in homologous recombination (HR) and DNA double strand break (DSB) repair. BRCA2 assists RAD51 fibrillation and defibrillation through binding with its eight BRC repeats, with BRC4 being one of the ...

ELSEVIER2023

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

Centromere structure and function: lessons from Drosophila

Eftychia Kyriacou

The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster serves as a powerful model organism for advancing our understanding of biological processes, not just by studying its similarities with other organisms including ourselves but also by investigating its differences to u ...

Genetics Society America2023

Recycling of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) Kits

Francesco Stellacci, Yong Zhu, Weina Liu

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) kits have been used as common diagnosing tools during the outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, with daily worldwide usage in the millions. It is well known that at the beginn ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2023

Whole-genome doubling drives oncogenic loss of chromatin segregation

Elisa Oricchio, Natalya Katanayeva, Ruxandra-Andreea Lambuta, Juan Diaz Miyar, Giovanni Ciriello, Daniele Tavernari

Whole-genome doubling (WGD) is a recurrent event in human cancers and it promotes chromosomal instability and acquisition of aneuploidies(1-8). However, the three-dimensional organization of chromatin in WGD cells and its contribution to oncogenic phenotyp ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2023

CENP-A and CENP-B collaborate to create an open centromeric chromatin state

Beat Fierz, Harsh Nagpal, Wei Cai

Centromeres are epigenetically defined via the presence of the histone H3 variant CENP-A. Contacting CENP-A nucleosomes, the constitutive centromere associated network (CCAN) and the kinetochore assemble, connecting the centromere to spindle microtubules d ...

Nature Portfolio2023

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

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

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