Bisio Lab

Research focus

ERC Starting Grant · 2024

Proving causality of liquid-liquid phase separation for the acquisition of nuclear-like functions by Giant Viruses Viral Factories

Giant Viruses (GVs) encode thousands of ORFan genes but their study has been nearly impossible due to the lack of genetic tools for reverse genetics. The aims of ViDaMa and the tools I designed will shed light into this Viral protein Dark Matter. Particularly, I will study how new genes from Mimivirus were engineered during evolution to acquire nuclear-like function for their Viral Factories (VFs). VFs physically separate viral DNA replication and transcription from translation and likely segregate DNA into active and silent. How these functions are accomplished remains elusive. I will demonstrate causality of liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) for the acquisition of nuclear-like…

From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.