The selected candidate will work in a team partner of the ERA-NET consortium "MEPIcephlay", built on complementary competences to enlarge the frame of our understanding on the influence of the crosstalk between genes controlling the cell cycle, metabolic pathways and the neocortical growth, and on how alterations of this crosstalk can lead to microcephaly.
Practically, the work will be focused on studies aiming to characterize the impact of changes in the cellular metabolic context on the development of early neocortical organoids derived from human hiPSCs, control and mutated for the MCPH1 gene. The production of human neocortical organoids is already established in the lab. The postdoc fellow will have to introduce mutations of the MCPH1 gene in control hiPSCs by using CRISPR-cas9 strategies. Gene expression studies and FACS analysis of the cell cycle will be extensively used to further characterize the crosstalk between MCPH1, Cell cycle and metabolic pathways.