Thomas BOULIN, Institut NeuroMyoGène, Lyon

Le 19 avril 2019

Institut de Recherche en Santé - 8 quai Moncousu - Nantes
Amphithéâtre Denis Escande

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11h30

Don’t get too excited! Genetic and functional dissection of neuromuscular potassium channels in C. elegans

Don’t get too excited! Genetic and functional dissection of neuromuscular potassium channels in C. elegans

Thomas BOULIN, PhD, invited by Julien Barc (Eq I)

CRCN, team leader, Institut NeuroMyoGène, CNRS UMR5310, INSERM U1217, Lyon

Biography

Thomas Boulin is a group leader at Institut NeuroMyoGène in Lyon. During his PhD with Oliver Hobert at Columbia University, he studied molecular and cellular mechanisms controling the formation and the maintenance of the C. elegans nervous system (Buelow, Neuron 2003). As a post-doc in Jean-Louis Bessereau’s team at École Normale Supérieure in Paris, he developed genetic and electrophysiological strategies to study synaptic function and acetylcholine receptor modulation (Boulin, PNAS 2008 ; Boulin, Nature Neuroscience 2012). Since starting his independent group in Lyon, his lab has been investigating the role of two-pore domain potassium channels in the regulation of cellular excitability (El Mouridi, G3 2017 ; Ben Soussia, Nature Communications 2019)

Abstract

A major interest of our lab is the understanding of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that control the excitability of neurons and muscle. In particular, on the role of the lesser-known class of the two-pore domain (K2P) potassium channels (Enyedi, 2010).

K2P channels form a large family of well-conserved ion channels that play a central role in the establishment and maintenance of the resting membrane potential of almost all animal cells. They regulate neuronal excitability, hormone secretion, respiratory and cardiac functions. Consistently, recent data has linked K2P dysfunction/mutation to severe cardiac conduction disorder (Friedrich, 2014), ventricular tachycardia (Decher, 2017), diabetes susceptibility (Vierra, 2015), and neurodevelopmental syndromes (Birk-Barel, FHEIG) (Barel, 2008 ; Bauer, 2018).

We combine powerful genetic strategies in the model nematode Caenorhabditis elegans with electrophysiological analysis (Xenopos oocyte two-electrode voltage-clamp) to understand various aspects of the cell biology and function of two-pore domain potassium channels.

Mis à jour le 08 mars 2019.