Publications by Christian Iseli

Melanin and Neurotransmitter Signalling Genes Are Differentially Co-Expressed in Growing Feathers of White and Rufous Barn Owls

Nicolas Jean Philippe Guex, Christian Iseli

Regulation of melanin-based pigmentation is complex, involving multiple genes. Because different genes can contribute to the same pigmentation phenotype, the genes identified in model organisms may not necessarily apply to wild species. In the barn owl (Ty ...

WILEY2025

Biomathematical enzyme kinetics model of prebiotic autocatalytic RNA networks: degenerating parasite-specific hyperparasite catalysts confer parasite resistance and herald the birth of molecular immunity

Christian Iseli

Catalysis and specifically autocatalysis are the quintessential building blocks of life. Yet, although autocatalytic networks are necessary, they are not sufficient for the emergence of life-like properties, such as replication and adaptation. The ultimate ...

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE2025

Repairing a deleterious domestication variant in a floral regulator gene of tomato by base editing

Giovanna Ambrosini, Nicolas Jean Philippe Guex, Christian Iseli

Crop genomes accumulate deleterious mutations—a phenomenon known as the cost of domestication. Precision genome editing has been proposed to eliminate such potentially harmful mutations; however, experimental demonstration is lacking. Here we identified a ...

2025

DNA methylation by CcrM contributes to genome maintenance in the Agrobacterium tumefaciens plant pathogen

Giovanna Ambrosini, Nicolas Jean Philippe Guex, Christian Iseli

The cell cycle-regulated DNA methyltransferase CcrM is conserved in most Alphaproteobacteria, but its role in bacteria with complex or multicentric genomes remains unexplored. Here, we compare the methylome, the transcriptome and the phenotypes of wild-typ ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS2024

Inhibition of anti-tumor immunity by melanoma cell-derived Activin-A depends on STING

Daniel Constam, Giovanna Ambrosini, Nicolas Jean Philippe Guex, Christian Iseli, Katarina Pinjusic

The transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) family member activin A (hereafter Activin-A) is overexpressed in many cancer types, often correlating with cancer-associated cachexia and poor prognosis. Activin-A secretion by melanoma cells indirectly imped ...

Frontiers Media Sa2024

Variant-specific pathophysiological mechanisms of AFF3 differently influence transcriptome profiles

Giovanna Ambrosini, Nicolas Jean Philippe Guex, Christian Iseli

Background: We previously described the KINSSHIP syndrome, an autosomal dominant disorder associated with intellectual disability (ID), mesomelic dysplasia and horseshoe kidney,caused by de novo variants in the degron of AFF3. Mouse knock-ins and overexpre ...

BMC2024

tRNA-derived fragments in T lymphocyte-beta cell crosstalk and in type 1 diabetes pathogenesis in NOD mice

Nicolas Jean Philippe Guex, Christian Iseli

Aims/hypothesistRNAs play a central role in protein synthesis. Besides this canonical function, they were recently found to generate non-coding RNA fragments (tRFs) regulating different cellular activities. The aim of this study was to assess the involveme ...

SPRINGER2024

Energy-harnessing problem solving of primordial life: Modeling the emergence of catalytic host-nested parasite life cycles

Christian Iseli

All life forms on earth ultimately descended from a primordial population dubbed the last universal common ancestor or LUCA via Darwinian evolution. Extant living systems share two salient functional features, a metabolism extracting and transforming energ ...

2023

DNA modifications impact natural transformation of Acinetobacter baumannii

Melanie Blokesch, Nicolas Jean Philippe Guex, Christian Iseli, Alexandre Lemopoulos, Nina Vesel

Acinetobacter baumannii is a dangerous nosocomial pathogen, especially due to its ability to rapidly acquire new genetic traits, including antibiotic resistance genes (ARG). In A. baumannii, natural competence for transformation, one of the primary modes o ...

2023

Chromosome-level organization of the regulatory genome in the Drosophila nervous system

Nicolas Jean Philippe Guex, Marion Leleu, Julien Dorier, Christian Iseli, Brian Donal McCabe, Rebecca Carolyn Smith

Previous studies have identified topologically associating domains (TADs) as basic units of genome organization. We present evidence of a previously unreported level of genome folding, where distant TAD pairs, megabases apart, interact to form meta-domains ...

2023