cfaed Seminar Series

cfaed Seminar Series

Dr. Martial Balland , University Grenoble Alpes, France

New ways to interrogate cellular decision making

18.04.2017 (Tuesday) , 17:00 - 18:00
BIOTEC, Seminar room E05/E06 , Tatzberg 47/49 , 01307 Dresden

Abstract

To survive and assemble into multicellular organism, cells need to migrate in specific directions either in order to find nutriments or define polarity axis in biological tissues. Cellular decision-making in defining those direction relies on a complex integration of various types of signals. How cells integrate all these cues in space and time to establish and maintain polarity to perform directed migration is a fundamental but unresolved problem. Using a highly interdisciplinary approach based on our unique joint expertise in light shaping, cellular optogenetics, advanced microscopy and cell mechanics, I will discuss the strategy we developed to probe how living cells deals with signal treatment. 

Everybody is welcome!

Biography

Dr. Martial BALLAND graduated in biomechanics from the University Denis Diderot Paris 7 in 2001. He was trained as a biomedical engineer at Polytech Marseille and obtained his PhD at the University Denis Diderot (Paris) in Physics in the group of François Gallet in 2004. From 2004 to 2007, he was post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Pascal Martin, at the Curie Institute in Paris working on collective effects of molecular motors. In 2007, he became assistant Professor at the Grenoble University in the LIPhy Laboratory. His lab is focused in understanding the mechanisms of cellular perception and particularly in cell cytoskeleton mechanosensitivity, essential component of cellular architecture. His group possesses a strong experimental expertise in the fabrication of lab on chip devices for cell mechanics and in the optical study (image analysis for life sciences). His analysis of biophysical phenomena also led him to propose several simple methods (Tseng & al LOC 2011, Mandal & al. Plos one 2012, Bureau & al. Methods in Cell Biol. 2014) and also to give new insights to the role of active generated forces in various cellular processes ranging from cell division to cell shape regulation (Lafaurie Janvore & al. Science 2013, Mandal & al. Nature communications 2014).

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