CV Science

Laurent Blanchoin PhD in Biochemistry

Course and current status

Laurent Blanchoin, Research Director CNRS DRCE2

Head of the CytomorphoLab with Manuel Théry since 2009

EMBO Member since 2021

Sylver Medal CNRS, 2019

Education

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1992-1995: PhD Student with Marie-France Carlier, Enzymology and Structural Biology Laboratory, The National Center for Scientific Research, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

1996-2001: Post-doctoral Fellow, with Thomas D. Pollard, Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA and Structural Biology Laboratory, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La JOLLA, CA, USA

Positions Held

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Since 2009: Senior Group Leader, CytoMorphoLab (http://cytomorpholab.com/), Grenoble, France, Interdisciplinary Research Institute Grenoble, Cell & Plant Physiology Laboratory, France.

2005-2008: Group leader ATIPplus, Actin Dynamics Laboratory, Grenoble, France, institute of Life Sciences Research and Technologies, Cell & Plant Physiology Laboratory, Grenoble, France

2002-2005: Junior Group leader ATIP/CNRS, Actin Dynamics Laboratory, Grenoble, France, institute of Life Sciences Research and Technologies, Cell & Plant Physiology Laboratory, Grenoble, France

Scientific summary

Our laboratory studies the architecture of cells. We are interested in the physicochemical principles that direct the self-assembly of cytoskeletal networks. We focus our efforts on the study of the spatial organization and dynamics of microtubule networks and actin filaments. Our experimental strategy is based on two complementary approaches in cell biology and biochemistry. On the one hand, we develop methods to control the shape of cells and simplify their architecture in order to reveal the elementary principles of their construction. On the other hand, we reconstitute the growth of cytoskeleton filaments in vitro from purified proteins in order to identify the intrinsic properties of these networks. Our goal in the following years is to bring together these "bottom-up" and "top-down" approaches and to produce an artificial cell, living and minimal, able to sense its environment and to orient itself in space.