CV Science

Dom Helmlinger PhD Cellular and Molecular Biology

Course and current status

2011- present: Group Leader, Team “Regulation of Gene Expression”. CNRS CR1 – ATIP. Macromolecular Biochemistry Research Center (CRBM), CNRS UMR 5237, Montpellier, France.

2005-2011: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Harvard Medical School, Department of Genetics, Boston, USA. Supervisor: Pr. Fred Winston.

2000-2005: Graduate Research, Institute of Genetics and Molecular & Cellular Biology, Department of Neurobiology & Genetics, Strasbourg, France. Supervisors: Dr. Didier Devys and Pr. Jean-Louis Mandel.

Scientific summary

My laboratory addresses fundamental questions about how cells respond to external signals by regulating gene expression. We have been specifically focusing on the transition between cell proliferation and differentiation. It has been recently suggested that many tumors are hierarchically organized heterogeneous populations comprising both undifferentiated, proliferating cells as well as differentiated cells. It is thus of key interest to understand the regulation of the transition from proliferation to differentiation in both normal and cancer cells.

This transition is controlled by extra-cellular signals, including growth factors and nutrients, which activate signaling pathways and eventually trigger a specific gene expression program. For example, it has been established that nutrient levels control proliferation through the mTOR kinase which regulates protein synthesis. Another critical point of control is transcription, which is regulated by many transcription factors and multiprotein complexes, including the SAGA transcriptional co-activator. Although translation and transcription have each been studied in great details, little is known about how these two processes are coupled. The overall goal of my laboratory is to understand how the different regulatory steps of gene expression are coupled and whether this is important to control the switch between proliferation and differentiation.