Typologie d'actualités : Prix et distinctions

Arnaud GAUTIER, Maître de Conférence au sein du Département de Chimie de l’École normale supérieure est lauréat du financement ERC Consolidator Grant 2016 et Médaille de Bronze du CNRS.

Visionnez son interview où il nous explique ce qu’est la chémobiologie et nous détaille ses projets à venir !

What is Chemical Biology?

Chemical biology gathers a community of scientists interested in science encompassing both chemistry and biology. Even though it originates from the accretion of several disciplines at the intersection of chemistry and biology (e.g. bioorganic chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology and pharmacology), chemical biology now extends beyond these boundaries, reaching a point where some scientists define themselves as chemical biologists. The reasons why chemists and biologists find a common interest in chemical biology are complementary: on one hand, for chemists, the complexity of biological systems appears like the ultimate playground in terms of chemical reactivity and analytical challenges; on the other hand, for biologists, chemistry appears like the most appropriate level of description to unravel biological processes. This led to the creation of a dynamic scientific community interested in understanding and manipulating biological systems in new ways using the knowledge of chemistry.  Chemical biology enables in particular the conception and discovery of powerful molecules to observe and virtually manipulate any cellular process, allowing for addressing biological problems that would otherwise remain elusive.

What is an ERC Consolidator Grant?

The european research council (ERC) is a European research agency, whose goal is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe  and to support frontier research across all fields, on the basis of scientific excellence as sole criterion. One of the goal is to support the work of the next generation of research leaders in Europe.

The ERC Consolidator Grant  aims at supporting young principal investigators to consolidate their independence. These grants are designed to back up researchers who want to establish their research teams and develop a successful career in Europe.

What is my project about ?

My project aims at pushing the frontiers of biological imaging. Today, biological imaging is an essential tool to understand living systems, which are complex systems driven by a set of dynamic biological events that are tightly orchestrated from the single molecule level to the entire organism level. The project FLUOSWITCH aims at providing chemical biology tools to address current challenges in biological imaging, such as: (1) How to image a large number of biomolecules in single cells to address the full complexity of a biological system? (2) How to increase the spatio-temporal resolution of biomolecular imaging to better understand biological processes both in space and time? (3) How to image endogenous biomolecules in their native environnement with high sensitivity and minimal perturbation of the studied system? (4) How to map active cell circuits in a whole organism?

 

Arnaud GAUTIER, Maître de Conférence ENS, est lauréat de la médaille de Bronze du CNRS, notamment pour le développement et la mise au point de nouveaux marqueurs fluorescents pour l’imagerie biologique.

La Médaille de bronze récompense le premier travail d’un chercheur, qui fait de lui un spécialiste de talent dans son domaine. Cette récompense représente un encouragement du CNRS à poursuivre des recherches bien engagées et déjà fécondes.

Consultez un exemple de sa recherche : Un interrupteur fluorescent pour le marquage des protéines.

 

A European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant has been awarded to Arnaud

Gautier, Maître de Conférences at the Department of Chemistry of ENS, for his project

FLUOSWITCH – Pushing the frontiers of biological imaging with genetically encoded

fluorescence switches.

English:

Our understanding of biological systems is intricately related to our ability to observe how

their inner constituents organize and interact. FLUOSWITCH is a multidisciplinary research

project aiming at pushing the frontiers of biological imaging. Combining concepts and

methods from Chemistry and Biology, FLUOSWITCH proposes to develop semi-synthetic

hybrid probes to interrogate quantitatively and comprehensively living systems at the

molecular, cellular and network levels. In the frame of this project, will be generated

molecular systems enabling (i) to push multiplexed imaging to visualize a large number of

targets, (ii) to increase the resolution of live-cell imaging to have a full comprehension of

biological processes both in space and time, (iii) to image endogenous molecules in their

native environment; and (iv) to map circuits of interacting cells in an entire organism.

Français :

Notre compréhension des systèmes biologiques est intimement liée à notre capacité

d’observer comment leurs constituants internes s’organisent et interagissent. Le projet

multidisciplinaire FLUOSWITCH a pour objectif de repousser les limites de l’imagerie

biologique. En combinant des concepts et méthodes issus de la Chimie et de la Biologie,

FLUOSWITCH propose de développer des sondes hybrides semi-synthétiques permettant

d’interroger les systèmes vivants de manière quantitative à de multiples échelles, moléculaire,

cellulaire et systémique. Dans le cadre de se projet, seront générés des systèmes moléculaires

permettant : (i) de repousser les limites de l’imagerie multiplexée pour observer un grand

nombre de cibles, (ii) d’augmenter la résolution spatiotemporelle de l’imagerie cellulaire pour

avoir une meilleure compréhension des processus biologiques, (iii) d’imager les molécules

endogènes dans leur environnement naturel, et (iv) de cartographier des circuits de cellules

actives dans un organisme entier.