University of Zürich/ETHZ, Switzerland
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Isabelle Mansuy |
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Isabelle Mansuy is an Associate Professor in Molecular and Cognitive Neurosciences at the Medical Faculty of the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. She studied biology at the University Louis Pasteur and the Superior School of Biotechnology in Strasbourg, France, then following a practical training at Novartis Laboratories, did a PhD in development neurobiology at the Friedrich Miescher Institute, in Basel, Switzerland. She then went for a postdoctorate to the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University in New York and came back to Switzerland to start her own lab in Zürich in December 1998.
Her research focuses on signaling pathways involving protein phosphatases in brain cells and their implication in synaptic plasticity, learning and memory. A particular focus is placed on protein phosphatases known to act as molecular constraints on learning and memory. These molecules are highly abundant in the brain but their roles and modes of action are not well understood. They are being investigated by a combination of approaches based on genetic, molecular, behavioral, electrophysiological, neuroimaging and proteomic methods. Various components of the phosphatases-dependent pathways are genetically manipulated in the mouse brain in vivo by transgenesis or lentivirus-mediated methods. The genetic manipulations are designed to modulate the activity of the phosphatases themselves, or of their substrates or regulatory partners in an inducible and reversible fashion in selected areas of the adult brain. The effects of the genetic manipulations are assessed on synaptic transmission, synaptic plasticity, learning and memory.
Another line of research in the laboratory is interested in the mechanisms by which environmental and genetic factors influence behavior, in particular how detrimental experiences during early life constitute risk factors for the development of behavioral and emotional disorders across generations. The nature of the mechanisms suspected to induce these behavioral effects is being studied. |
