Rénald Delanoue, Inserm Researcher, and his colleagues at the Institute of Biology Valrose in Nice (Inserm-CNRS-Université Côte d’Azur) have identified the missing links in the process that regulates the size of an organism based on the richness of its diet. Their research was conducted on Drosophila, an insect that seems very distant from humans, but the study of which has nonetheless enabled many advances in biomedical research. This work...
An international team, including researchers in France at Inserm, CNRS and the University of Strasbourg, brought together at IGBMC[1] is lifting the veil on the molecular mechanisms causing heart dysfunctions in myotonic dystrophy, a genetic disease affecting one person in 8,000. This new study, published this week in Nature Communications, could contribute to discovering a treatment.
Researchers at Inserm Unit 1194, “Montpellier Cancer Research Institute” (Inserm/University of Montpellier/Montpellier Regional Cancer Institute) have confirmed the value of a new test to identify cancer patients who will be free of sequelae following radiotherapy. This test, conducted on a blood sample taken from 500 breast cancer patients, treated in 10 centres in France, and monitored for 3 years, showed that women with a high rate of radiation-induced lymphocyte...
The first embryonic division, which follows gamete fusion (oocyte and spermatozoon), starts the development of a new individual, the genesis of a functional adult body. This division is symmetric in the one-cell embryo stage (also known as the zygote); it leads to the formation of two daughter cells of identical size. Conversely, it is asymmetric in the oocyte, which has the same size and shape as the zygote. Why?...
researchers from Maria-Elena Torres-Padilla’s team have pushed the limits of science even further. They managed to obtain totipotent cells with the same characteristics as those of the earliest embryonic stages and with even more interesting properties.
Researchers at Inserm and Paris Descartes University have just taken an important step in research on stem cells and dental repair. They have managed to isolate dental stem cell lines and to describe the natural mechanism by which they repair lesions in the teeth.
An international collaboration coordinated by the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) (University of Heidelberg), including French researchers from the Institute of Genetics and Development of Rennes (IGDR) (CNRS/University of Rennes 1) under the leadership of Gwenaël Rabut, Inserm Researcher, and teams from Sweden and Canada, has just demonstrated a new molecular mechanism that may allow cells to destroy proteins accidentally localised to the nucleus.
How can a specialized cell change its identity? A team from the Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (CNRS/INSERM/Université de Strasbourg) investigated a 100% effective natural example of this phenomenon, which is called transdifferentiation. This process, by which some cells lose their characteristics and acquire a new identity, could be more generally […]
Consuming oils rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids, especially 'omega 3', is good for our health. But the mechanisms explaining these effects are poorly understood. Researchers from the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology (CNRS/Nice Sophia Antipolis University), the Compartmentation and Cellular Dynamics Unit (CNRS/Curie Institute/UPMC) of Inserm and Poitiers University1 were interested in the effect of lipids carrying polyunsaturated chains when they are taken into cell membranes.
In the fruit fly Drosophila and zebrafish, mechanical strain may activate the genetic cascade that initiates the formation of the future organs during embryogenesis. A discovery made by Emmanuel Farge (Inserm Research Director at Institut Curie) and his staff might explain the emergence of the first complex organisms more than 570 million years ago.