BIOSKETCH TEAM LUCO

My scientific trip started at the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona as a PhD student at Jorge Ferrer's lab (Spain). This is the first time I heard the word chromatin and I could never separate from it ever again. In my PhD, I studied the role of histone marks in spatially organising in the nuclear space genes relevant for an inherited type of diabetes using in vivo models. During my postdoc at the NIH in Tom Misteli's lab (USA), my passion for chromatin exponentially increased when I realised that it can go beyond the DNA and also regulate RNA splicing. This seminal discovery allowed me to build my own research group in 2013 at the Institut de Génétique Humaine in Montpellier (France), where I continued to study the global role of histone marks in defining cell type-specific splicing patterns. By developing CRISPR epigenetic and RNA editing tools, we are now better understanding the leading role of histone marks in establishing cell type-specific splicing patterns essential for the acquisition of novel phenotypic traits characteristic of invasive cells. Thanks to our recent moving to the Institut Curie in Paris, the team is now delving deeper in the role of chromatin-mediated splicing regulation in cell invasion and dissemination prior to metastasis. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and we want to see it all.