News of Science
Exploitation of Arabidopsis genome to improve crop properties
7.12.2015 | News of Science
Currently, we solve three main tasks using Arabidopsis thaliana as model: 1. Genetic determination of metabolome pathway connected to prenylflavonoid and lupulin production in hop. 2. Study of pospiviroid pathogenesis in hop. 3. Biogenesis of anticancerogenic nucleases.
RNA Biology of Protists
30.11.2015 | News of Science
Our newly established group studies various aspects of RNA biology of protozoan parasite Trypanosoma brucei and related flagellates. In those early evolved unicellular organisms, most genes are regulated post-transcriptionally. Consequently, post-transcriptional processing of RNA becomes of great importance in order to regulate complex life cycles...
Pyrrhocoris apterus as an insect model
16.11.2015 | News of Science
Insect are the most prolific and abundant group of organisms, including many pest species with economic importance. Surprisingly, Drosophila melanogaster, the excellent genetic model is not a typical insect representative. Therefore, new models are needed to fully understand biology, physiology and development characteristic to most insect...
Sphaerospora as a model for studying parasite transmission in aquatic systems
2.11.2015 | News of Science
Aquaculture has become the fastest growing lifestock production industry and a number of parasites beloning to the Myxozoa, relatives of free-living jellyfish, are important pathogens in different production systems for fish destined to human consumption. Traditional myxozoan research has focussed on their taxonomy and systematics, thus, to date,...
Environmental genomics
19.10.2015 | News of Science
The majority of Earth’s biodiversity is microscopic and cannot be kept in permanent cultures. However, our knowledge of life is based on extensive exploitation of few either macroscopic (Arabidopsis, Oryza, Drosophila, Caenorhabditis, rat or Xenopus…) or cultivable unicellular (Saccharomyces, Neurospora, Chlamydomonas…) models representing only a...
Mitochondria as a drug target in unicellular human parasites
5.10.2015 | News of Science
Parasitic protozoans (e.g. Trypanosoma and Leishmania) bring enormous disease burden mainly in developing countries and thus they have negative effect on our collective health and economy. The diseases caused by these parasites (i.e. Human African Trypanosomiases and Leishmaniases, respectively) are labeled by World Health Organization as...
The Notch pathway
21.9.2015 | News of Science
The Notch pathway is one of the most important and well conserved signalling pathways that controls many different cell decisions and is associated with a number of diseases, including cancers. However, the consequences of activating Notch differ according to the cellular contexts. At one extreme Notch promotes proliferation and has been linked to...
Chromera velia as a model to study evolution of parasitism
7.9.2015 | News of Science
Apicomplexan parasites cause harmful diseases of animals including humans. These parasites includes also the most devastating ones, such as Plasmodium, a causative agent of malaria and Toxoplasma gondii causing numerous latent infections of humans with proposed impact to their behavior. It was shown that apicomplexans contain secondary...
Role of lepidopteran sex chromosomes in sex determination and speciation
24.8.2015 | News of Science
Moths and butterflies (Lepidoptera) represent the largest group of organisms with female heterogamety and WZ/ZZ sex chromosome system. The basal moth lineages have a primitive sex chromosome constitution, Z0/ZZ (female/male) and also some species of advanced lineages lost the W chromosome. We study the structure, composition and evolution of the...
Regulation of telomeric length in insects
10.8.2015 | News of Science
DNA-protein complexes at the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes, telomeres, are biomarkers of aging and health conditions of organism. Short telomere length is associated with premature aging and numerous human diseases, such as cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, cancer or diabetes. Length of telomeres is influenced by genetic,...
