Yves Barral

Yves Barral has been a Full Professor of Cellular Biochemistry at ETHZ since 2009. His expertise is in molecular genetics, cellular biochemistry and biophysics, the molecular biology of ageing and asymmetric cell division. He has worked out the mechanisms by which budding yeast cells distinguish circular DNA molecules from chromosomes and segregate them asymmetrically at mitosis to prevent their propagation in the population. He has also shown that these circular pieces of DNA affect cellular physiology by interacting with and modifying the organization of nuclear pores, and extended these studies to fission yeast and mammalian cells in vitro. Together with the discoveries of the Regenberg group about the natural formation of circular DNA in all cell types, these findings are seminal for the current blooming of the field of eukaryotic circular DNA.