We are interested in the regulatory mechanisms underlying vertebrate pattern formation, in both developmental and evolutionary contexts. For the past years, we have focused on Hox genes, a family of transcription…
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Epigenetics, the heritable changes in gene function occurring without a change in the DNA sequence is a major new field in life sciences. Here again, Drosophila has led the way with…
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We are interested in how mammals extract socially relevant information from the outside world, and how this information is translated into an adequate behavior. In order to gain insight into the…
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Evolution is a unifying paradigm with important implications in virtually all areas of biology. Indeed, all characters that are studied in biology, from morphological or behavioural traits to the immune system…
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We investigate on the genetic history and evolution of human populations through the molecular and statistical analysis of various genetic markers: the major histocompatibility complex HLA, mtDNA sequences, nuclear and Y-chromosome…
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A fascinating, unanswered question in biology is how some organisms respond to injury by regenerating the missing body structure, whereas other have lost this potential. Here we propose to use the…
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Although it is now possible to engineer living organisms to express almost any gene in a controlled fashion, the mechanisms governing this control still remain elusive. In eukaryotes, genes are large,…
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We are interested in molecular evolution and ecology of protists, using genomic data to reconstruct their phylogenetic relations and assess their diversity. Protists are a heterogeneous assemblage of single-cell eukaryotes characterized…
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The APA laboratory develops studies and teaching about human population in Africa, from prehistoric to modern times, and its relationships with climatic and environmental changes. This research involves different approaches, both…
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The Natural History Museum of Geneva (MHNG) has always been linked to the University through teaching and research activities. The Museum is the largest in Switzerland and host over 15 million…
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We are conducting several research lines in animal evolution using molecular tools, from species formation and biogeography to evolutionary genomics and organismal adaptation. Why do tropical regions of the world harbor…
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Transcriptionnal regulation of RNA polymerase II at the level of the elongation phase Transcription by RNA polymerase II can be divided in several stages, in particular the preinitiation, the initiation, the…
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