Angela Giangrande - Transcriptional regulation and neural differentiation in Drosophila
Max Planck Seminar
- Date: Mar 30, 2017
- Time: 01:00 PM c.t. - 02:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Angela Giangrande
- L'institut de génétique et de biologie moléculaire et cellulaire (IGBMC), Strasbourg, France
- Location: MPI-IE
- Room: Main Lecture Hall
- Host: Nicola Iovino
CV
Angela Giangrande obtained her PhD in Strasbourg, where she developed her interests in transcriptional regulation and in the Drosophila melanogaster genetic model. After an EMBO postdoctoral fellowship in the USA, she returned to Strasbourg where she set up her group at the IGBMC. She is now heading a research group on “Immune and neural development” in the department for “Functional Genomics & Cancer” at the IGBMC Strasbourg.
Research
Multipotent stem cells produce different cell types through the implementation of specific transcriptional and epigenetic programs. One of the present challenges in developmental biology is to understand the precise cascades underlying these programs.
In Drosophila, a single transcription factor, the Zinc finger protein Glide/Gcm, is necessary and sufficient to trigger the glial fate at the expense of the neuronal fate. Gcm induces the coordinated expression of genes that execute the glial fate as well as a very low level of H3K9acetylation in glial cells. In order to decipher the mechanisms triggering neural development, we are currently investigating the Gcm cascade and the significance of this cell-specific epigenetic signature.
source: lab page & USIAS