Cellular and molecular controls of muscle repair and homeostasis: a Drosophila model
Centre de Biologie Integrative, UMR 5547 CNRS, Université de Toulouse
Invité par Bénédicte Durand.
Résumé
Satellite cells are muscle stem cells (SCs), which play essential roles in muscle repair and maintenance. One fundamental question is how such cells are specified and then protected from differentiation for a prolonged period of time. To investigate this question, we used as a model the recently identified Drosophila SCs and found that it involves a switch in RNA-isoforms coding for the transcription factor Zhf1/ZEB, a key player in SC maintenance. This switch, under Notch control, enables SC to escape differentiation by producing an alternate ZEB-short RNA isoform, which lacks the miR-8/miR-200 seed site present in ZEB-long isoforms. This mechanism may be of wide biological relevance. Another timely and poorly understood question is how SCs are activated and behave for rebuilding muscles following injury. My research program aims at elucidating cellular aspects of SC activation in a living animal and the molecular control of this behavior.
Hadi Boukhatmi and Sarah Bray (2018). A population of adult satellite-like cells in Drosophila is maintained through a switch in RNA-isoforms. eLife 2018;7:e35954.
Hadi Boukhatmi, Torcato Martins, Zoe Pillidge, Tsveta Kamenova and Sarah Bray (2020). Notch mediates inter-tissue communication to promote tumorigenesis. Current Biology 30, 1-12.