Research Thematics
News
CALL for a NEW RESEARCH GROUP LEADER
The GReD wishes to recruit a new independent leader to form a group within the scientific spectrum of the GReD. The GReD will provide laboratory space (50m2) and free access to state-of-the-art technological platforms (cell/tissue culture, FACS, imaging/live imaging, histology). The successful candidates will have full access to transgenic plant and animal (mouse, drosophila, Arabidopsis) and bioinformatics facilities and will benefit of administrative support. Facilities for high-throughput sequencing, mass spectrometry, proteomics, electron microscopy and radiobiology are available on the multidisciplinary Medical School campus.
Appel à candidature pour la future direction du GReD
Le GReD lance un appel à candidature pour recruter sa future directrice ou futur directeur, pour une prise de fonction en janvier 2021
PhD Thesis defense : Fabiana CERQUEIRA CAMPOS
Fabiana CERQUEIRA CAMPOS (Team “Epithelial Growth and Morphogenesis") will defend her thesis entitled:
''Etude du rôle du complexe Dystrophine-Dystroglycan au cours de l'élongation tissulaire du follicule ovarien chez la Drosophile''
Friday the3 1 st of August 2018 at 2:30 pm
Amphi Volcan , CRBC Building , Medical School
PhD Thesis defense : Cecilia BASSALERT
Cecilia BASSALERT (Team “Molecular mechanisms of cell lineage differentiation in the early mouse embryo") will defend her thesis entitled:
"Influence des voies de signalisation IGF et MAPK sur la spécification des lignages de l'embryon de souris préimplantatoire."
Friday the 7th of September 2018 at 2 pm
Amphi 2B , Medical School
DNA methylation : a new actor in CML biology
Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), a cancer of the white blood cell, results from a translocation event that ultimately leads to the production of BCR-ABL1, a chimeric oncoprotein that promotes CML by aberrantly phosphorylating target proteins. Nonetheless, this event on its own, cannot account for an increasing number of clinical observation suggesting the involvement of other pathways, among which DNA methylation alteration emerges as a relevant candidate.
On that basis the teams of Marc BERGER (CHU, Clermont-Ferrand) and Philippe ARNAUD have characterized for the first time the DNA methylation patterns of CML cell subsets (immature and mature cells) isolated form the same clone during the early stage of the disease, before any treatment (Maupetit-Méhouas, Court, Bourgne et al.,). Altogether, this collaborative study demonstrated that DNA methylation abnormalities exist at early stages of CML and can affect the transcriptional landscape of malignant cells. These observations paved the way for new therapeutic strategies based on epigenetic drugs.
GENOME PLASTICITY: EXAMPLE OF 5S RIBOSOMAL RNA GENES
The genes coding 5S ribosomal RNAs (critical components of the ribosomes, the cellular machineries translating mRNA into proteins) are highly repeated in the genome, which allows the production of large quantities of these rRNAs.
In their last study (Simon et al., 2018), the team of Aline Probst and Christophe Tatout revealed an important variation in number and expression of 5S rRNA genes between different ecotypes of Arabidopsis thaliana.
Cymbopogon citratus and cancer: when citronella is a repellent not only for mosquitoes…
Through a real bilateral collaboration, Drs. Silvère BARON’s et and Jean-Marc LOBACCARO’s team Nuclear Receptor and Prostate diseases and Pr. Jacques SIMPORE’s team (Laboratoire de Biologie Moléculaire et de Génétique, Université de Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso), have identified medicinal plants of the Burkina Faso pharmacopeia that could be used in the future in cancer treatment (Bayala et al., 2018).
Recombination machinery compensates telomere loss in the absence of telomerase.
The chromosomes of most eukaryotic species are linear, consisting of a single DNA double-helix running from one end to the other. Each chromosome thus has two ends and these are protected by specialized DNA-protein structures named telomeres. The importance of telomere structure is readily observed in the severe genetic instability and cell death that result from its absence.
In its last study ( Olivier et al., 2018), the team of Charles White and Maria Gallego unveiled mechanisms by which recombination machinery contributes to protect the telomeres from replicative failure, ensuring their stability.
How to turn a football into a rugby ball?
Tissue elongation is part of the repertoire of processes that allow an organ to acquire its shape (morphogenesis). In the last years, the elongation of the ovarian follicle of Drosophila has emerged as a model of choice for the study of tissue elongation mechanisms. During its development the initially spherical follicle becomes ovoid and this elongation is controlled by the epithelial cells surrounding each follicle. However, so far, all studies on the subject have focused on the basal domain of these cells.
In its last study (Alegot et al.,) , the group of Vincent Mirouse has shown that the apical domain of the epithelial cells also contributed to this elongation.
LINE fishing... with the new bioinformatics tool CLIFinder
Repeated elements represent 45% of the human genome. However, due to their large number and their high sequence homology, the contribution of those elements to the human genome transcriptome remains difficult to study. Particularly, implication of recent LINE-1 (L1) elements to the transcriptional expression profile of cells and tissues is probably under-evaluated. Indeed, those L1 elements possess, in addition to their sense promoter, an antisense promoter (ASP) which allow the transcription of their adjacent sequences (which may include genes) in the form of LINE-1 chimeric transcripts (LCTs). Such LCTs have been already described in literature bur the question remains of the pangenomic extent of this transcriptional activity.
In a study conducted by Catherine Barrière (Pinson, Pogorelcnik et al., 2017), Philippe Arnaud’s team has developed and validated CLIFinder (Chimeric Line Finder), a new software dedicated to the identification of LCTs from stranded paired-end RNA-seq data. Thus, CLIFinder take advantage of the strong potential of next generation sequencing to unravel the complete transcriptome composition and allow the “fishing”, among all the transcriptome’s sequences, of numerous LCTs comprising a L1 sequence and a unique sequence of the genome. The CLIFinder tool is today available for the scientific community to realize extensive analyses in normal and pathological tissues. Indeed, many LCTs have been identified specifically in tumors and are supposed to play a functional role in tumorigenesis.
This software has been published in Bioinformatics (Pinson, Pogorelcnik et al., 2017)
In a few words...
The GReD is a Research Center at Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne Rhône Alpes region of France. Created in 2008, the GReD is supported by the University Clermont Auvergne (UCA), the CNRS (UMR6293) and the INSERM (U1103). The center is composed of 14 research groups (totalling 147 people in December 2017) based at the Centre de Recherche Bio-Clinique (CRBC) on the campus ...
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