We celebrated Science in October

Every October, we celebrate science through the “Fête de la Science”, a popular public event that celebrates science, technology and innovation. It is open to all and helps promote the sharing of knowledge. This year, our Centre was involved in two visits.

Our visitors in the middle of an experiment!

Joseph and his kids, Axel and Maxence, discovered the immuno-labeling technique with Margherita.

Organoids: mini organs that grow in the laboratory (Oct. 6)

This first visit was organised by the Labex Who Am I?, at the Institut Jacques Monod, in the context of the CNRS “Visites Insolites”. A limited number of participants (12 max) spend half a day in the laboratory to discover stem cells, organoids, fluorescence, etc. Details about this visit are in French here: Visite Insolite.

Congratulations to our lab members for their involvement in the organization and success of the event:

Mikaëlle Bocel, enSCORE research assistant (EDC/IJM)

Kamal Bouhali, enSCORE research engineer (EDC/IJM)

Valérie Drouet, project manager (Labex Who Am I?/EDC)

Carla Piqueras, PhD student (Rougeulle team)

Alexandre Plessier, post-doctoral fellow (Polo team)

Annalisa Verrico, post-doctoral fellow (Mezger team)

Alert! My DNA is damaged (Oct. 14)

This visit was organised by Sandra Piquet, research assistant in the Polo group. We opened the doors of our lab to all for a 2-hours workshop arranged in four steps:

How to grow and prepare the cells needed for the experiments,
How to label the DNA and proteins of interest,
How a fluorescence microscope works and how we use it to see DNA and proteins,
How the results are analysed and interpreted.

Details about this visit are in French here: Alerte ! Mon ADN est cassé

We welcomed 31 participants, including 5 kids. Many thanks to the lab members involved!

Slimane Ait-Si-Ali, team leader

Angélique Amo, research assistant (Weitzman team)

Sarah Battault, research assistant (Defossez team)

Léo Carrillo, PhD student (Rougeulle team)

Emmanuel Cazottes, PhD student (Rougeulle team)

Valérie Drouet, project manager (Labex Who Am I?/EDC)

Alice Granados, post-doctoral fellow (Ait-Si-Ali team)

Margherita Mori, PhD student (Polo team)

Eliane Petit, PhD student (Polo team)

Carla Piqueras, PhD student (Rougeulle team)

Sandra Piquet, research assistant (Polo team)

Alexandre Plessier, post-doctoral fellow (Polo team)

Call for new Research Group Leader

Epigenetics & Cell Fate

The CNRS is launching a call for applications for a Junior Professor Chair (Chaire de Professeur Junior, CPJ) entitled “Epigenetics of Cellular Fate (EpiDeC)”, hosted at our Centre. All details in this document.

Sophie Polo elected EMBO member

Epigenetics & Cell Fate, Polo group

Honored to be part of this prestigious scientific community. Sophie Polo in her laboratory © Romain Redler / Art in research for the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller À lire aussi

New research article on the role of SETDB1 in regulating inflammation and fibrosis in Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Ait-Si-Ali group, Publications

In this paper, we show that SETDB1 regulates the TGFβ-induced secretome and identify EMILIN1, an extracellular matrix protein, as a novel player in this process. EMILIN1 is overexpressed in muscle biopsies from DMD patients and influences both myogenic differentiation...

Seminar Benoît MOINDROT –July 8, 2026

Epigenetics & Cell Fate, Symposia and seminars

Dr. Benoît MOINDROT The Institute for Integrative Biology of the Cell (I2BC), University Paris-Saclay Invited by Dr. Dounia DJEGHLOUL "One Genome, Two Voices: Decoding allelic chromatin-regulatory layers, and their perturbations, at imprinted domains." The seminar...