[7] His research centered upon identification of novel markers in the fine mapping of a locally prevalent cardiac disease (PFHB1).
[9] Christoffels started his academic career in 1994 as a Genetics Technician in medical Biochemistry at the Stellenbosch University.
Followed by this appointment, he served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Nanyang Technological University based in Singapore.
Later on, he held the appointment of associate professor from 2007 to 2012 in the South African National Bioinformatics Institute at the University of the Western Cape.
[11] From 2009, Christoffels serves as the Director of South African National Bioinformatics Institute at the University of the Western Cape.
[13] He was appointed as President of African Society of Bioinformatics & Computational Biology in 2020 for a two-year term.
[14] Followed by stakeholder meeting convened by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Christoffels and his international partners launched a global initiative called Public Health Alliance for Genomic Epidemiology[15] in October 2019 at the GrandChallenges meeting in Ethiopia.
[18] His recent work features conducting research on scaling up disease surveillance systems on the African continent.
In 2016, he described the non-coding RNA (miRNA) in Anopheles funestus, and postulated roles of these small genes in understanding of parasitic control by blood-sucking mosquito.
He has subsequently used his analytical methods to describe non-coding RNA regulation in the Black soldier fly.
Given a significant gene order scrambling, the conserved linkages between Fugu rubripes and humans show the preservation of segments of chromosomes associated with the common vertebrate ancestor.
The study also strongly suggests a whole-genome duplication during the ray-finned fish evolution, which may also have occurred before the origin of teleosts.
[32][33] Christoffels was part of the executive team who managed the genome project,[34] and led the scientific analyses by supervising the Ph.D. students who analyzed different regions of the genome in detail as it pertains to innate protection against the pathogen (Trypanosome),[35] Trypanosomatid SNAREs comparison,[36] chemical signaling to find a host,[37] and promoter architecture in Tsetse.