Institut Pasteur

Prof. Dr. Pierre-Jean Corringer
Rue du Docteur Roux 25-28
75724 Paris
France

The Pasteur Institute is a non-profit private foundation dedicated to the prevention and treatment of diseases through biological research, education and public health activities. Its neuroscience department develops an integrated approach, genetic, molecular, cellular network and behaviour, to understand brain functions.

In 2007, the Corringer laboratory has been the first group to express and identify the function of a prokaryotic homolog of cys-loop receptors, from the cyanobacteria Gloeobacter violaceus. Bacterial homologs display a simplified structure that make them the best prototypes of the cys-loop superfamily to perform X-ray structure determination combined with mutagenesis and electrophysiology, to unravel the common mechanisms of signal transduction operating in the family. In the Neurocypres project, this work will be performed by Corringer and Delarue, in collaboration with Ulens (partner 3), Bregestovski(partner 9) and Bertrand (partner 12). The Pasteur Institute has also generated multiple mouse strains knocked-out for different subunits of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (Maskos), that will be use to investigate nicotinic receptors and interacting molecules in the brain, in collaboration with Gotti (partner 13). Next partner >