Mezger group

Interface between Development and Environment

Mezger team

November 2024

© Mezger team 2024

Our main goals

Our team focuses on the link between brain development and integrity and stress responses under normal conditions and environmental stress. We aim at understanding the interactions between the cellular stress responses and the epigenetic and transcriptional regulations taking place in the healthy or diseased developing brain.

Over the years, we have found that stress-responsive factors are unexpectedly active and necessary for brain development, under physiological conditions. This turn them into main drivers of neurodevelopmental defects under prenatal stress conditions. Moreover, we found that stress-responsive pathways are also perturbed in models of neurodevelopmental disorders of genetic origins, making them attractive potential target for future therapeutic approaches.

Our current research topics

Our interests follow two main research axes:

  • To clarify the role of HSF2, a member of the HSF family, and that of other stress-responsive transcription factor pathways, in the brain development and as mediators of some of the defects occurring in neurodevelopmental pathologies
  • To clarify how prenatal stress impacts the reorganization of the neuro-epigenome and the transcriptome and causes neurodevelopmental defects

Epigenome and stress

Stress pathways and neurodevelopmental disorders

Publications

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2015

2014

2012

2011

2010

Funding

Our research is funded by

Contact

Valérie Mezger, valerie.mezger@u-paris.fr

Applications of motivated student and postdoc are welcome. Do not hesitate to contact us.

Read more

Congratulations to the Dr. Kevin Daupin

Congratulations to the Dr. Kevin Daupin

Congratulations to Dr. Kevin Daupin who defended his thesis this Wednesday, December 4, 2024 on « Integrity of Neuroepithelium & the Neural Niche in Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome Derived Neural Models : A perspective on the implication of HSF2 pathways dysregulations...

Call for new Research Group Leaders

Call for new Research Group Leaders

The Epigenetics and Cell Fate Centre is seeking to recruit two talented junior and/or senior group leaders.Download the call (.pdf) Download the application form (.doc)   The Epigenetics and Cell Fate Centre is a leading institute exploring cell identity and...