The Helsen lab at the University of Geneva explores how centromeres and chromosomes evolve, diversify, and function across eukaryotes. Discover our latest publications, research team, and open positio...

PhD (f/m/d)

Increased RNA polymerase III (Pol III) activity and tRNA abundance are widely linked to cancer cell growth, yet the functional requirement for individual Pol III genes and core components remains uncl...

Transposable elements mobilize within and occasionally between genomes, including from host to virus. We identified two insertions of the human BC200 noncoding RNA gene in the poxvirus molluscum conta...

Fascinated by evolution and driven by curiosity, Malik studies everything from viruses to Drosophila and, like his research subjects, is constantly reinventing himself.

Summary: The placenta is the only mammalian organ that harbors a cancer-like genome while remaining functional and healthy. This Review highlights its high mutational load, structural variants, aneupl...

Although oxygen, a major product of oxygenic photosynthesis, has played a significant role in the evolution of the biosphere, its involvement in photosymbioses remains poorly understood, and this revi...

Cyanobacteria are the only prokaryotes to have evolved oxygenic photosynthesis, transforming the geochemistry and biology of the planet. They exhib...

Using LOPIT-DC-based spatial proteomics, Cadena et al. map the sub-organellar protein landscape of Paulinella chromatophora, a cercozoan with evolutionary-early-stage photosynthetic organelles. They f...

Tiny Living Beings · Episode

Acceleration of photoprotective nonphotochemical quenching (NPQ) responses to changes in light intensity has been suggested as a strategy to enhanc...

Cold-stress signals are transmitted to chloroplasts and subsequently trigger cold responses through an RAF-like bi-kinase module where cytoplasmic RAF3 and plasma membrane RAF6 translocate to chloropl...

CRISPR-Cas provides RNA-mediated adaptive immunity, but how its first RNA-guided effector arose is unclear. In this study, we report the discovery of Viral Interference Programmable Repeat (VIPR) syst...

Researchers are racing to culture a menagerie of exotic organisms and finding lots of surprises along the way.

The ability of enzymes to sense signals and respond by changing their structure and activity underlies cellular processes from signaling to metabolic control. While there have been recent advances in ...

Welcome! Our research focuses on the evolutionary process at the molecular level. In particular, we investigate how a mixture of natural selection and non-adaptive forces create and maintain the amazi...