M1BP is an essential transcriptional activator of oxidative metabolism during Drosophila development.

Oxidative metabolism is the predominant energy source for aerobic muscle contraction in adult animals. How the cellular and molecular components that support aerobic muscle physiology are put in place during development through their transcriptional regulation is not well understood. Using the Drosophila flight muscle model, we show that the formation of mitochondria cristae harbouring the respiratory chain is concomitant with a large-scale transcriptional upregulation of genes linked with oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) during specific stages of flight muscle development.

A nanobody toolbox to investigate localisation and dynamics of titins and other key sarcomeric proteins.

Measuring the positions and dynamics of proteins in intact tissues or whole animals is key to understanding protein function. However, to date, this is challenging, as the accessibility of large antibodies to dense tissues is often limited, and fluorescent proteins inserted close to a domain of interest may affect protein function. These complications apply in particular to muscle sarcomeres, arguably one of the most protein-dense assemblies in nature, which complicates studying sarcomere morphogenesis at molecular resolution.

Mechanobiology of muscle and myofibril morphogenesis.

Muscles generate forces for animal locomotion. The contractile apparatus of muscles is the sarcomere, a highly regular array of large actin and myosin filaments linked by gigantic titin springs. During muscle development many sarcomeres assemble in series into long periodic myofibrils that mechanically connect the attached skeleton elements.

Myofibril and mitochondria morphogenesis are coordinated by a mechanical feedback mechanism in muscle.

Complex animals build specialised muscles to match specific biomechanical and energetic needs. Hence, composition and architecture of sarcomeres and mitochondria are muscle type specific. However, mechanisms coordinating mitochondria with sarcomere morphogenesis are elusive.

The Hippo pathway controls myofibril assembly and muscle fiber growth by regulating sarcomeric gene expression.

Skeletal muscles are composed of gigantic cells called muscle fibers, packed with force-producing myofibrils. During development, the size of individual muscle fibers must dramatically enlarge to match with skeletal growth. How muscle growth is coordinated with growth of the contractile apparatus is not understood.

Coopted temporal patterning governs cellular hierarchy, heterogeneity and metabolism in neuroblast tumors.

It is still unclear what drives progression of childhood tumors. During larval development, asymmetrically-dividing neural stem cells, called neuroblasts, progress through an intrinsic temporal patterning program that ensures cessation of divisions before adulthood. We previously showed that temporal patterning also delineates an early developmental window during which neuroblasts are susceptible to tumor initiation (Narbonne-Reveau et al.

Intestinal IRE1 Is Required for Increased Triglyceride Metabolism and Longer Lifespan under Dietary Restriction.

Dietary restriction (DR) is one of the most robust lifespan-extending interventions in animals. The beneficial effects of DR involve a metabolic adaptation toward increased triglyceride usage. The regulatory mechanism and the tissue specificity of this metabolic switch remain unclear.

Dissecting the calcium-induced differentiation of human primary keratinocytes stem cells by integrative and structural network analyses.

The molecular details underlying the time-dependent assembly of protein complexes in cellular networks, such as those that occur during differentiation, are largely unexplored. Focusing on the calcium-induced differentiation of primary human keratinocytes as a model system for a major cellular reorganization process, we look at the expression of genes whose products are involved in manually-annotated protein complexes. Clustering analyses revealed only moderate co-expression of functionally related proteins during differentiation.

Human epidermal stem cell function is regulated by circadian oscillations.

Human skin copes with harmful environmental factors that are circadian in nature, yet how circadian rhythms modulate the function of human epidermal stem cells is mostly unknown. Here we show that in human epidermal stem cells and their differentiated counterparts, core clock genes peak in a successive and phased manner, establishing distinct temporal intervals during the 24 hr day period. Each of these successive clock waves is associated with a peak in the expression of subsets of transcripts that temporally segregate the predisposition of epidermal stem cells to respond to cues that regulate their proliferation or differentiation, such as TGFβ and calcium.

Polycomb in stem cells: PRC1 branches out.

Polycomb group proteins (PcGs) generate chromatin-modifying complexes that regulate gene expression. PcGs are categorized into two major groups, polycomb repressive complex 1 (PRC1) and 2 (PRC2), which have classically been thought to function together. Here we discuss recent data challenging this model indicating that the distinct subunit composition of PRC1 confers specific and nonoverlapping functions in embryonic and adult stem cells.

Regulation of human epidermal stem cell proliferation and senescence requires polycomb- dependent and -independent functions of Cbx4.

Human epidermal stem cells transit from a slow cycling to an actively proliferating state to contribute to homeostasis. Both stem cell states differ in their cell cycle profiles but must remain guarded from differentiation and senescence. Here we show that Cbx4, a Polycomb Repressive Complex 1 (PRC1)-associated protein, maintains human epidermal stem cells as slow-cycling and undifferentiated, while protecting them from senescence.