Postdoctoral position on Self-sustained velocity waves and emergence of robust patterns in...

-Improve the microfluidic system already developped by the team in order to better control the curvature and the deformation of the epithelial monolayer.
-Design and perform cell biology experiments to evaluate the impact of curvature and mechanical stress on calcium signaling.
-Prepare a report of the results in English.

The Postdoctoral fellow will work within the team "Cytoskeletal Dynamics and Nuclear Functions" in the Institute for Advanced Biosciences (IAB). In the context of the Suprawave project, the postodoral researcher will investigate the consequences of mechanical stress on epthelial monolayer tension and calcium signaling.

The postdoctoral researcher will contribute to the ANR project Suprawaves. He/She will work in the team "Cytoskeletal Dynamic and Nuclear functions" within the Institute for Advanced Biosciences (IAB - https://iab.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr ) and in collaboration with Liphy (laboratoire de Physique Interdisciplinaire). IAB is a Research Center jointly supported by the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), by the The National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Grenoble AlpesUniversity (UGA). With 18 research teams and groups and supported by 5 technical core facilities, IAB focuses its activities on the mechanisms and dynamics of the reprogramming of living systems under the influence of their close or distant environment, at the molecular, cellular, tissue and systemic levels. The "Cytoskeletal Dynamics and Nuclear Functions" team aims at understanding the mechanisms that control nuclear functions in response to cytoskeletal-mediated mechanical forces.
Several studies reported that wave-like patterns spontaneously appear in colonies of epithelial cells. We propose the hypothesis that those waves induce a spontaneous transcriptomic divergence between the cells situated in the wave nodes and those located in the antinodes, as periodic stretching may reorganize cell cytoskeleton in way that depends on the perturbation period and strain. This might lead to the emergence of an alternative mechanism to the one proposed by Turing in patterning biological tissues and ultimately a new process potentially driving morphogenesis events.