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Junk plastic turns into high-value commodity with chemistry trick
Nature journalists discuss a chemical route that converts PVC waste into motor lubricant and engineered yeast that produces a potential cancer drug.
Role of the gut microbiota in the development of alcohol use disorder
The gut microbiota is composed of a very large number of bacteria, viruses, fungi and yeasts that play an important role in the body, through the production of a series of metabolites (including neurotransmitters), and through an essential role in the barrier function of the gut and the regulation of immunity and stress response. In this lecture I will present, based mainly on human studies but also on preclinical studies, the evidence for a role of the gut microbiota in the development of alcohol use disorder. I will show the first results of trials to test the effects of nutritional approaches to address these deficits.
Growing in flows: from evolutionary dynamics to microbial jets
Biological systems can self-organize in complex structures, able to evolve and adapt to widely varying environmental conditions. Despite the importance of fluid flow for transporting and organizing populations, few laboratory systems exist to systematically investigate the impact of advection on their spatial evolutionary dynamics. In this talk, I will discuss how we can address this problem by studying the morphology and genetic spatial structure of microbial colonies growing on the surface of a viscous substrate. When grown on a liquid, I will show that S. cerevisiae (baker’s yeast) can behave like “active matter” and collectively generate a fluid flow many times larger than the unperturbed colony expansion speed, which in turn produces mechanical stresses and fragmentation of the initial colony. Combining laboratory experiments with numerical modeling, I will demonstrate that the coupling between metabolic activity and hydrodynamic flows can produce positive feedbacks and drive preferential growth phenomena leading to the formation of microbial jets. Our work provides rich opportunities to explore the interplay between hydrodynamics, growth and competition within a versatile system.
“LIM Domain Proteins in Cell Mechanotransduction”
My lab studies the design principles of cytoskeletal materials the drive cellular morphogenesis, with a focus on contractile machinery in adherent cells. In addition to force generation, a key feature of these materials are distributed force sensors which allow for rapid assembly, adaptation, repair and disintegration. Here I will discuss our recent identification of 18 proteins from the zyxin, paxillin, Tes and Enigma families with mechanosensitive LIM (Lin11, Isl- 1 & Mec-3) domains. We developed a screen to assess the force-dependent localization of LIM domain-containing region (LCR) from ~30 genes to the actin cytoskeleton and identified features common to their force-sensitive localization. Through in vitro reconstitution, we found that the LCR binds directly to mechanically stressed actin filaments. Moreover, the LCR from the fission yeast protein paxillin-like 1 is also mechanosensitive, suggesting force-sensitivity is highly conserved. We speculate that the evolutionary emergence of contractile F-actin machinery coincided with, or required, proteins that could report on the stresses present there to maintain homeostasis of actively stressed networks.