Research interests

Skeletal muscle is an extremely plastic tissue which can adapt to the changing demands of the organism. A fascinating property of skeletal muscle is its amazing capacity to repair and regenerate. However, this capacity declines with age and is affected in various pathological conditions such as certain myopathies.

Muscle regeneration relies on the process of post-natal myogenesis, which involves adult, resident stem cells, the so-called satellite cells. Upon muscle damage, these normally quiescent cells enter a differentiation programme, which takes them through well-defined, tightly regulated differentiation stages. Activated satellite cells first give rise to a population of proliferating transit amplifying cells, the so-called myoblasts. After a certain number of cell cycles, myoblasts stop proliferating and differentiate into committed precursor cells, the myocytes. Myocytes then fuse together to form new immature myofibres, or to damaged fibres to repair injured muscles. Finally, the maturation stage involves in particular a regulation of the myofibre size.

The different stages of adult myogenesis

Harnessing the mechanisms of myogenesis holds great promise for future therapeutic approaches to treat muscle wasting. However, a prerequisite is a deeper understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved, in particular the specific signalling pathways and genetic programmes that ensure a proper timing of cell fate decision at the different stages of myogenesis.

Current projects

• Regulation and function of the transcriptional regulator nTRIP6
• Role of translational regulation in myogenesis
• Regulation of myofibre size in the developing zebrafish embryo
• Development of molecular tools (collaboration with the groups of Olalla Vázquez, Philipps Universität Marburg, and of Barbara Di Ventura, BIOSS, University of Freiburg)
• Zebrafish models of human genetic diseases (collaboration with Hélène Dolfus, Laboratoire de Génétique Médicale, Université de Strasbourg)