Publications related to Dynamics of the most common pathogenic mtDNA variant m.3243A > G demonstrate frequency-dependency in blood and positive selection in the germline

The role of LRRK2 in lung adenocarcinoma

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide and the most common lung cancer subtype is lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). Frequently mutated genes involve activating mutations in KRAS and loss of function mutations in TP53. LUADs primarily ...

EPFL2024

Reproductive isolation arises during laboratory adaptation to a novel hot environment

Ana Marija Jaksic

Background: Reproductive isolation can result from adaptive processes (e.g., ecological speciation and mutation-order speciation) or stochastic processes such as "system drift" model. Ecological speciation predicts barriers to gene flow between populations ...

BMC2024

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

Unraveling mitochondrial dynamics: exploring asymmetries and function through advanced microscopy

Julius Hans Bernd Winter

Still displaying characteristics of their bacterial origin, such as autonomous division, motility, and their own genome, mitochondria remain an elusive component of modern eukaryotes. They produce most of the cell's energy in the form of adenosine triphosp ...

EPFL2024

Drug Screening in C. elegans to identify new pharmacological mitochondrial stress inducers

Amélia Lalou

Mitochondria are essential organelles participating in numerous cellular functions, including energy harvesting, regulation of homeostasis and apoptosis. Changes in mitochondrial number, morphology, and function not only impact cellular metabolism but also ...

EPFL2024

Reanalysis of mtDNA mutations of human primordial germ cells (PGCs) reveals NUMT contamination and suggests that selection in PGCs may be positive

Konstantin Popadin

The resilience of the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) to a high mutational pressure depends, in part, on negative purifying selection in the germline. A paradigm in the field has been that such selection, at least in part, takes place in primordial germ cells ...

Elsevier Sci Ltd2023

PSGL-1 is an evolutionarily conserved antiviral restriction factor

Ying Liu, Chao Jiang

The arms race between viruses and their hosts shaped the evolutionary history and the genome composition of both parties. Restriction factors are the first-line antiviral effectors encoded by the host genomes and are often conserved through evolution to pr ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2023

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

Environment-dependent epistasis increases phenotypic diversity in gene regulatory networks

Florence Gauye, Florian Baier

Mutations to gene regulatory networks can be maladaptive or a source of evolutionary novelty. Epistasis con-founds our understanding of how mutations affect the expression patterns of gene regulatory networks, a chal-lenge exacerbated by the dependence of ...

AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE2023

Individual and combined benefits of different nonequilibrium proofreading mechanisms

Paolo De Los Rios, Daniel Maria Busiello, Stefano Zamuner, Adélaïde Alice Mohr

Genome duplication, transcription, and translation are among many crucial cellular processes that need to be performed with high fidelity. However, those extremely low error rates cannot be explained with simple equilibrium thermodynamic considerations. Th ...

Amer Physical Soc2023