Thierry Gaude

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITION:
Research Director at CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), Laboratory of Reproduction and Plant Development, Head of the Endocytosis and Cell Signaling (SiCE) team, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon

EDUCATION:
PhD First Class, University Claude Bernard Lyon I, France

HONORS/AWARDS:
• 2001: Prix Leconte from the French Academy of Sciences
• 2007: Award from the French Academy of Sciences 'Major Advances in French Biology', Paris, France, June 12 (Y Jaillais and T Gaude)
• 2008: Elected EMBO Member

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Endocytosis and endosome trafficking have recently emerged as major players in the regulation of signaling pathways in various eukaryotic model systems, including plants. The internalization of plasma membrane receptors and the paths they take once inside the cell actively control the duration, amplitude and specificity of signaling. In the cruciferous (Brassicaceae) plants, we recently showed that the S-locus receptor kinase (SRK) involved in the self-incompatibility (SI) response is predominantly accumulated in sorting endosomes and is present only at low levels at the plasma membrane (Ivanov and Gaude, 2009). Following ligand perception at the plasma membrane, SRK is endocytosed and sent to endosomes. In a previous study, we reported that the kinase domain of SRK interacts with a plant homolog of the mammalian sorting nexin 1 (SNX1), which is one component of the retromer complex (Vanoosthuyse et al, 2003). The retromer is conserved from yeast to human, including plants, and is involved in the recycling of membrane receptors that mediate the transport of vacuolar/lysosomal hydrolases. Interestingly, new functions are being discovered for the retromer, such as an essential role in mouse embryo development or in WNT-dependent signaling pathways that regulate various developmental processes in Caenorhabditis elegans, flies and mammals. We recently found that the plant retromer complex acts in cell polarity and demonstrated its key role in embryo development and organogenesis in Arabidopsis thaliana (Jaillais et al, 2006, 2007; Pourcher et al, 2010).

The aim of the SiCE group is to understand the role of endocytosis and protein trafficking in the control of diverse cell signaling and plant developmental processes. We focus on two major questions: (i) How does endocytosis modulate the signaling pathway that controls self-pollen recognition and rejection during the self-incompatibility (SI) response in the Brassicaceae? and (ii) What are the developmental processes which are mediated by the retromer complex in A. thaliana?

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