ROBICHON , Alain

The study of intrinsic phosphorylation dynamics and kinetics in the context of complex protein architecture in vivo has been challenging: Method limitations have prevented significant advances in the understanding of the highly variable turnover of phosphate groups, synergy, and cooperativity between P-sites. However, over the last decade,...

The role of the RNAi/Dicer/Ago system to degrade RNA viruses has been elusive in mammals, which prompted authors to think that interferon (IFN) synthesis is essential in this clade relegating the RNAi defense strategy against viral infection as accessory function. We explore the theoretical possibilities that RNAi triggered by SARS-CoV-2 might...

The phosphorylation of proteins affects their functions in extensively documented circumstances. However, the role of phosphorylation in many interactive networks of proteins remains very elusive due to the experimental limits of exploring the transient interaction in a large complex of assembled proteins induced by stimulation. Previous...

The role of the RNAi/Dicer/Ago system in degrading RNA viruses has been elusive in mammals in the past, which has prompted authors to think that interferon (IFN) synthesis is essential in this clade, relegating the RNAi defense strategy against viral infection as an accessory function. However, recent publications highlight the existence of...

Keywords: miRNA mRNA collection RNA annealing subclasses of mRNA A B S T R A C T Perfect annealing between microRNAs (miRNAs) and messenger RNAs (mRNAs) was computationally searched at a broad scale in the human genome to determine whether theoretical pairing is restrictively represented in functional subnetworks or is randomly distributed....

In this study, we reanalyzed available datasets of gene expression changes in female Drosophila head induced by mating. Mated females present metabolic phenotypic changes and display behavioral characteristics that are not observed in virgin females, such as repulsion to male sexual aggressiveness, fidelity to food spots selected for...

The neuroanatomy of Drosophila wing chemosensilla and the analysis of their sensory organ precursor cell lineage have demonstrated that they are surprisingly related to taste perception. The microarchitecture of wing bristles limits the use of electrophysiology methods to investigate wing chemosensory mechanisms. However, by monitoring the...

Double-stranded DNA is able to form triple-helical structures by accommodating a third nucleotide strand. A nucleic acid triplex occurs according to Hoogsteen rules that predict the stability and affinity of the third strand bound to the Watson–Crick duplex. The " triplex-forming oligonucleotide " (TFO) can be a short sequence of RNA that binds...

International audience

The hereditary transmission of a phenotype independent from DNA sequence implies epigenetic effects. Paramutation is a heritable epigenetic phenomenon observed in plants and animals. To investigate paramutation in Drosophila, we used the P{ry+t7.2 = PZ}Dl05151 P-element insertion in the Drosophila melanogaster genome that causes a dominant...

RNA interference (RNAi) refers to a conserved posttranscriptional mechanism for the degradation of RNA by short dsRNAs. A genome-wide analysis of mRNAs that are complementary to RNAs of variable length that are transcribed from the full transcriptome and susceptible to being loaded onto Argonaute type 2 was performed through computational...

The neurogenesis and neuronal functions in insect wing have been understudied mainly due to technical hindrances that have prevented electrophysiology studies for decades. The reason is that the nano-architecture of the wing chemosensory bristles hampers the receptors accessibility of odorants/tastants to receptors in fixed setup, whereas in...

The pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum has two modes of reproduction: parthenogenetic during the spring and summer and sexual in autumn. This ability to alternate between reproductive modes and the emergence of clonal populations under favorable conditions make this organism an interesting model for genetic and epigenetic studies. The pea aphid...

National audience

The scarcity of transcriptional regulatory genes in Buchnera aphidicola, an obligate endosymbiont in aphids, suggests the stability of expressed gene patterns and metabolic pathways. This observation argues in favor of the hypothesis that this endosymbiont bacteria might contribute little to the host adaptation when aphid hosts are facing...

The evolution of powered flight in insects had major consequences for global biodiversity and involved the acquisition of adaptive processes allowing individuals to disperse to new ecological niches. Flies use both vision and olfactory input from their antennae to guide their flight; chemosensors on fly wings have been described, but their...

Aphids respond to specific environmental cues by producing alternative morphs, a phenomenon called polyphenism, but also by modulating their individual behavior even within the same morph. This complex plasticity allows a rapid adaptation of individuals to fluctuating environmental conditions, but the underlying genetic and molecular mechanisms...

Neuroanatomical evidence argues for the presence of taste sensilla in Drosophila wings; however, the taste physiology of insect wings remains hypothetical, and a comprehensive link to mechanical functions, such as flight, wing flapping, and grooming, is lacking. Our data show that the sensilla of the Drosophila anterior wing margin respond to...

Article in open access

A singular adaptive phenotype of a parthenogenetic insect species (Acyrthosiphon pisum) was selected in cold conditions and is characterized by a remarkable apparition of a greenish colour. The aphid pigments involve carotenoid genes well defined in chloroplasts and cyanobacteria and amazingly present in the aphid genome, likely by lateral...

In the Drosophila wing anterior margin, the dendrites of gustatory neurons occupy the interior of thin and long bristles that present tiny pores at their extremities. Many attempts to measure ligand-evoked currents in insect wing gustatory neurons have been unsuccessful for technical reasons. The functions of this gustatory activity therefore...

Chemoreception in insects is capable to detect highly diverse families of molecules like sugars, various bitter molecules, toxins, water, carbon dioxide and also a large panel of "xenobiotics", which guide exploration for ecological niches.The taste neuronal elements are amazingly present in insect wings and this feature appears highly...

Genetic variation in the gene foraging (for) is associated with a natural behavioral dimorphism in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Some larvae, called 'rovers', have increased foraging locomotion compared to others, called 'sitters', and this difference is directly related to for-encoded cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG) activity....

Behaviors in insects are partly highly efficient Bayesian processes that fulfill exploratory tasks ending with the colonization of new ecological niches. The foraging (for) gene in Drosophila encodes a cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG). It has been extensively described as a frequency-dependent gene and its transcripts are differentially...