Federica Mantica

The paper compares tissue-specific alternative splicing and gene expression across species to show they follow distinct evolutionary routes in repurposing ancestral genes, with TS-AS playing a key role in nervous system diversification.

The paper investigates ZGA timing across 61 animal species and finds that genome size to cytoplasm volume ratio predicts ZGA onset.

The paper investigates the phenotypic impact of individual conserved neuronal microexons and their regulators in zebrafish, finding that microexon deletions have mild effects while Srrm3/4 loss causes severe neurodevelopmental and behavioral changes.

The paper analyzes sequence and expression divergence of 7,000 conserved genes across vertebrates and insects to identify patterns of molecular diversification and lineage-specific evolution.

The paper investigates how arboviruses like chikungunya virus maintain persistent infections in mosquito cells through translational repression of viral RNA without affecting host cell fitness.

The paper investigates the evolution of tissue-specific gene expression across vertebrates and insects, finding that nearly half of ancestral genes have been recruited into tissue-specific transcriptomes.

The paper identifies Srrm3-dependent microexons as critical for photoreceptor function and vision, showing their role in outer segment maintenance and their loss leading to blindness.

ExOrthist infers exon orthologies across species by analyzing exon sequences and their surrounding intron context, enabling analysis at any evolutionary distance.