Congratulations to Benjamin for his PhD thesis

Beautiful images made by Benjamin during his PhD thesis in collaboration and co-supervision with Christine Dupont, David Alsteens , Henri-François Renard and my lab.

Here, using homemade fluorescent nanostructured cell culture surfaces, Benjamin investigated the role of BAR domain proteins as mechanosensors of plasma membrane geometry. Our data reveal that distinct subsets of BAR proteins bind to plasma membrane deformations in a membrane curvature radius-dependent manner. Interestingly, distinct cellular processes involving BAR domain proteins seem to be primed at these sites of high membrane curvature. We focused on one of them, the local actin cytoskeleton polymerisation. We demonstrated that membrane curvature promotes the formation of dynamic actin structures mediated by the Rho GTPase CDC42, the F-BAR protein CIP4 and the presence of PI(4,5)P2, independently of clathrin.

A preprint version of the paper is visible here