Publications by authors named "A Mozzi"
Structural Maintenance of Chromosomes (SMC) complexes are an evolutionary conserved protein family. In most eukaryotes, three SMC complexes have been characterized, as follows: cohesin, condensin, and SMC5/6 complexes. These complexes are involved in a plethora of functions, and defects in SMC genes can lead to an increased risk of chromosomal abnormalities, infertility, and cancer.
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- The zinc-finger antiviral protein (ZAP) plays a crucial role in innate immunity by targeting non-self nucleic acids, interacting with cofactors like TRIM25, Riplet, and KHNYN to exert its antiviral effects.
- An analysis of ZAP and its cofactors across four mammalian groups showed signs of positive selection, indicating rapid evolutionary change, particularly in intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) that evolve faster than the structured parts of the proteins.
- The study suggests that phase separation (PS) may be linked to the antiviral functions of ZAP and its cofactors, with positively selected sites in these regions highlighting their importance in the ongoing evolutionary battle between hosts and viruses.
Several mammalian genes have originated from the domestication of retrotransposons, selfish mobile elements related to retroviruses. Some of the proteins encoded by these genes have maintained virus-like features; including self-processing, capsid structure formation, and the generation of different isoforms through -1 programmed ribosomal frameshifting. Using quantitative approaches in molecular evolution and biophysical analyses, we studied 28 retrotransposon-derived genes, with a focus on the evolution of virus-like features.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDinucleotide biases have been widely investigated in the genomes of eukaryotes and viruses, but not in bacteria. We assembled a dataset of bacterial genomes (>15 000), which are representative of the genetic diversity in the kingdom Eubacteria, and we analyzed dinucleotide biases in relation to different traits. We found that TpA dinucleotides are the most depleted and that CpG dinucleotides show the widest dispersion.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCoronaviruses encode a variable number of accessory proteins that are involved in host-virus interaction, suppression of immune responses, or immune evasion. SARS-CoV-2 encodes at least twelve accessory proteins, whose roles during infection have been studied. Nevertheless, the role of the ORF3c accessory protein, an alternative open reading frame of ORF3a, has remained elusive.
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