Swiss TPH

The core scientific interest of the Gene Regulation team focuses on different aspects of nuclear biology in Plasmodium falciparum. Several studies in the genome-informed era of malaria research uncovered intriguing features of nuclear biology in malaria parasites such as a highly coordinated mode of stage- and cell cycle-dependent gene transcription, a complex epigenetic strategy to control mutually exclusive virulence gene transcription, and the identification of the phylum-specific ApiAP2 family of putative transcription factors. These and other examples highlight the existence of dedicated nuclear processes vital to the specific biology of malaria parasites. It is our aim to identify and understand such processes in greater detail. To achieve our goals we combine classical molecular and cell biology tools with reverse genetics approaches and genome-wide analyses. Specific projects pursued in our lab are (1) to study the mechanisms of mutually exclusive virulence gene expression; (2) to describe and investigate nuclear landmark structures; and (3) to characterise the parasite nucleus by organellar proteomics to generate a platform for future functional analyses of the parasite nucleus.