Gaell Mainguy

Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity | CRI

The research ecosystem in sub-Saharan Africa is changing. Organised around new centres of scientific excellence, the sub-continent is building a research agenda aimed toward major development challenges and the achievement of the sustainable development goals. Thus, strengthening doctoral programs and their beneficiaries becomes crucial in supporti...

Changes in many dimensions of our lives have been accelerating, due notably to contemporary systemic crises and technological innovation. They invite us to rethink the ways we share information, learn and cooperate to face our personal, local and global challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic epitomizes the need to generate and nurture 'learning communit...

Le 4 avril 2018, François Taddei a remis aux ministres de l’Éducation nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et du Travail, un rapport intitulé "Un plan pour co-construire une société apprenante" visant à créer "un service public de la société apprenante". Cinq actions, qui regroupent 30 propositions détaillées, structurent ce plan. Les auteurs com...

As threats from climate change related hazards increase in cities around the world, communities are faced with an urgent requirement for self-evaluation. It is essential to expose and assess potential hazards facing cities, as well as to consider potential impacts and responses. While the promotion of efficiency and promise of protection have been...

effective development of city-regions is a major challenge and requires reliable and pertinent indicators to guide planners’ actions and monitor progress. The large number of ‘green city’ and ‘sustainable city’ indices that are flourishing today differ in key aspects of methodology and definition, in part because there is no consensus on the main a...

Schizophrenia is a heterogeneous disease generally considered to result from a combination of heritable and environmental factors. Although its pathophysiology has not been fully determined, biological studies support the involvement of several possible components including altered DNA methylation, abnormal glutamatergic transmission, altered mitoc...

The Hox clusters play a crucial role in body patterning during animal development. They encode both Hox transcription factor and micro-RNA genes that are activated in a precise temporal and spatial sequence that follows their chromosomal order. These remarkable collinear properties confer functional unit status for Hox clusters. We developed the Tr...

Structuring information into knowledge is an important challenge for the 21 st century. The emergence of internet and the diffusion of collaborative practices provide new tools with which to build and share knowledge. Scientists are seeking efficient ways to get recognition and to diffuse their work while Wikipedia is seeking well grounded contribu...

The World Academy of Young Scientists argue that double blind peer-review will generate a better perception of fairness and equality in global scientific funding and publishing.

The presence of stem cells in the adult, in particular but not only in the central nervous system, suggests that one could use this reservoir for replacement therapies. Thus large numbers of studies are aimed at elucidating the sequence of signaling events leading from stem cells to the cells with the desired differentiated phenotype. Recently, we...

Unlike the genetic code, the protein–DNA recognition modalities are degenerate in both directions. Consequently, how do transcription factors achieve their considerable specificity and selectivity in regulating the genetic programs that they ultimately influence? Here, we discuss the fact that different Hox gene-specific variants of retinoid respon...

Iota-toxin from Clostridium perfringens type E is a binary toxin consisting of two independent proteins, an enzymatic Ia and binding Ib component. Ia catalyses ADP-ribosylation of actin monomers, thus disrupting the actin cytoskeleton. In this report, we show that Ia plus Ib applied apically or basolaterally induce a rapid decrease in the transepit...

Outgrowth of the dendrites and the axon is the basis of the establishment of the neuronal shape, and it requires addition of new membrane to both growing processes. It is not yet clear whether one or two exocytotic pathways are responsible for the respective outgrowth of axons and dendrites. We have previously shown that tetanus neurotoxin-insensit...

To identify genes regulated by homeoprotein transcription factors in postnatal neurons, the DNA-binding domain (homeodomain) of Engrailed homeoprotein was internalized into rat cerebellum neurons. The internalized homeodomain (EnHD) acts as a competitive inhibitor of Engrailed and of several homeoproteins (Mainguy et al., 2000). Analysis by differe...

The function of several genes and proteins is unknown or only partially known. This is obviously the case for orphan molecules but also for molecules identified on the basis of mutations, or functional studies. In addition, a survey of the literature indicates that many — if not all — genes serve multiple functions. In this period of rapid gene and...

An important issue in developmental biology is the identification of homeoprotein target genes. We have developed a strategy based on the internalization and nuclear addressing of exogenous homeodomains, using an engrailed homeodomain (EnHD) to screen an embryonic stem (ES) cell gene trap library. Eight integrated gene trap loci responded to EnHD....

In a recent gene-trap screen, we identified the gene coding for Epidermal Bullous Pemphigoid Antigen 1 (BPAG1) as a putative transcriptional target of Engrailed and of other homeoproteins with a glutamine in position 50 of their homeodomain. We now show that the nuclear addressing of the homeodomains of Engrailed (EnHD) and Antennapedia (AntpHD) up...