Laboratory:
Institut Jacques Monod

Supervisor: Marie-Anne Felix
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Phone: + 33 (0)1 44 27 40 88
Lab address:
Institut Jacques Monod, CNRS - Universities of Paris 7&6, UMR7592
Tour 43, 2 place Jussieu, 75251 Paris cedex 05


Unit Director: Jean-Antoine Lepesant

Key subjects: Evolution,signaling network, development

Keywords: Caenorhabditis species, cell ablations, quantitative scoring of cell afates

summary of lab's interests:
See:http://ijm2.ijm.jussieu.fr/ijm/research/research-groups/nematode?set_language=en&cl=en

Summary of project:

The project concerns the evolution of a signaling network in different species of the Caenorhabditis genus.
C. elegans vulva development is a model developmental system. In this system, a row of six precursor cells, P(3-8).p, are competent to form vulval tissue. P6.p usually adopts a 1° vulval fate, P5.p and P7.p a 2° vulval fate, and the other cells a non-vulval 3° fate. The spatial cell fate pattern ('332123') is organized in response to a LIN-3/EGF signal emitted by the gonadal anchor cell. Cell fate patterning involves a well-characterized network of intercellular signaling pathways, including EGF/Ras and Notch (ref. 1).
The system output - the cell fate pattern - is quasi-invariant in the Caenorhabditis genus. However, quantitative evolution in this signaling network has been demonstrated by scoring of cell fate patterns after ablation of the anchor cell during the induction process (ref. 2).
In the past two years, six new species of Caenorhabditis have been discovered (unpublished) and their phylogenetic relationship established by our collaborators (K. Kiontke and D. Fitch, unpublished). The project is to perform anchor cell ablations in these new species and score the resulting cell fate patterns. Changes in the signaling network will then be mapped on the Caenorhabditis phylogeny.

1. Sternberg PW (2005). Vulval development. WormBook, ed. The C. elegans Research Community, doi/10.1895/wormbook.1.6.1, www.wormbook.org.

2. Félix, M.-A. (2007). Cryptic quantitative evolution of the vulva intercellular network in Caenorhabditis. Curr. Biol. 17, 103-114.