Bienvenu(e) sur le site de l'Institut Necker Enfants Malades
The main focus of our research team is to understand how mammalian cells mobilize organelles, endomembrane-based signaling platforms and autophagic machinery to adapt to stress situations and external stimuli.
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https://www.researchgate.net/lab/Etienne-Morel-Lab-autophagy-pathway-and-intracellular-membrane-dynamics-Etienne-Morel
Mammalian intracellular compartments are highly regulated and renewed to ensure the maintaining of proper cell physiology. In this dynamic context, the intracellular degradative autophagy pathway probably takes advantages of – and initiates dialogs with - pre-existing signaling platforms, organelles and endomembranes. Although there is low-level basal activity, autophagy is mostly associated with stress responses and is considered as an acute protective system that ensures cell homeostasis and contributes directly to cell metabolism and energy regulation. Accordingly, autophagy participates in development, immunity and protects against cell modifications related to ageing. Autophagy involves the formation, and subsequent trafficking, of autophagosomes, which arise from the closure of transient cup-shaped double-membrane structure termed phagophore that capture cytoplasmic cargos for a final delivery to lysosomes. Studying the crosstalk of autophagic machinery with other cellular organelles and structures, such as mitochondria, endosomes and primary cilia, will shed light on the importance of endomembranes and signaling platforms cooperation in stress sensing and homeostasis regulation in a wide variety of mammalian cells.
Our project aims at investigating the cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate autophagic pathway during stress response in cooperation with other endomembranes, in physiological and pathophysiological situations.
3 interconnected axes are currently investigated in my laboratory:
Keywords: autophagic membranes and machinery, chemical, nutritional, infectious and mechanical stresses, primary cilium, endosomes, mitochondria, metabolism, membrane dynamics and contact-sites.
Etienne Morel is an INSERM research director (DR2) and group leader in the cell biology department of INEM. He obtained his PhD degree in Physiology and Cell Biology from Pierre et Marie Curie (Sorbonne) University in 2003 after 3 years as a graduate student in the lab of Jean Chambaz and Monique Rousset where he worked on lipoproteins trafficking and prion infection in epithelial cells. He then specialized on basic aspects of cellular biology by studying endosomal membrane dynamics in the lab of Jean Gruenberg in Geneva (Postdoc #1, 2004-2009, Dept. of Biochemistry of the University of Geneva) as well as in the biology of endosomal phosphoinositides in Alzheimer’s disease in the labs of Gilbert di Paolo and Scott Small in New York (Postdoc #2, 2009-2010, Cell Biology & Pathology Dept. of Columbia University). After having a permanent position at INSERM, he came back to France, at the Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers in Paris where he studied the role of autophagosome in neutral lipids behavior in enterocytes from 2010 to 2013. In 2014 he joined the research group of Patrice Codogno at the cell biology dept. of Institut Necker Enfants Malades to develop projects on basic autophagy in the context of stress sensing and he became group-leader of the “autophagy pathway and intracellular compartments dynamics” lab in 2019. The main goal of his research team is to understand how mammalian cells organelles and intracellular components cooperate with autophagic machinery to respond to stress stimuli. Recent data obtained in the lab identified several signaling platforms and organelles as key regulators of stress sensing and autophagic processes, such as the primary cilium, the mitochondria, the endosomal network or the membrane contact sites.
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