Alejandro R. Burga

The paper investigates genetic conflict between toxin-antidote elements in C. tropicalis, revealing their role in shaping hyperdivergent haplotypes through competition and recombination.

The paper shows how a duplicated tRNA synthetase evolved into a novel toxin by losing its ancestral function and acquiring a new role in targeting Aurora kinase A.

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

This study identifies SPARK as a conserved multi-protein complex essential for vertebrate fertilization, linking gamete recognition to membrane fusion.

The paper investigates how interdependent protein interactions evolve by studying toxin-antidote elements, finding that toxins and antidotes can arise simultaneously through the duplication of a regulatory module.

The paper identifies Mavericks, viral-like transposons, as vectors of horizontal gene transfer between divergent species, leading to genetic incompatibilities.

The paper investigates how selfish toxin-antidote elements evade silencing in C. tropicalis by showing maternal mRNA licenses zygotic expression through counteracting piRNAs.

The paper identifies toxin-antidote elements in Caenorhabditis species, showing they cause developmental delay and are subject to balancing selection.

This paper introduces ceX-QTL, a method for fast genetic mapping of complex traits in C. elegans using bulk selection on millions of individuals, and demonstrates its application in identifying drug resistance, gene expression, and fitness loci.