Magali Suzanne

 Magali Suzanne obtained her PhD from the University of Toulouse, then performed a post-doc at the CBM in Madrid, Spain. She then worked at the IBV in Nice, France and was a visiting scientist at the Rockefeller University in New York, USA.

She settled her own team in 2011 at the CBI in Toulouse, working on cell death and cell delamination mechanics in remodeling tissues. Her lab takes as a study model the formation of folds, a simple morphogenetic process allowing to go from a 2-dimensional structure to a 3-dimensional structure. The team uses a combination of models: Drosophila, Chicken/quail and theoretical models.

 Their work is at the interface of developmental biology, cell biology and biophysics.

• A pioneer study from her lab revealed that apoptotic cells, far from being passively eliminated, instead actively participate in tissue remodeling (#1). Indeed, apoptotic cells generate a force in the depth of the epithelium before their elimination, which increases local tension and mechanically signals to the neighboring cells, thereby favoring tissue remodeling.
• Her team further established that the apoptotic nucleus is an essential player in the efficient propagation of the apoptotic force to the surrounding tissue (#2). They found that a contractile actomyosin structure links the apical surface to the apoptotic nucleus, which thus acts as an anchoring point. They further found that this cellular mechanism of force generation and its impact on morphogenesis is conserved during evolution (#3).
• Her group revealed that EMT, which constitutes an important driving force in tissue remodeling, relies on a similar apico-basal force (#4). Apoptosis and EMT, two processes with opposite outcome, are thus mechanically surprisingly similar.
• Her lab characterized the signaling events leading to the formation of dying cells during tissue folding [#5), and further identified a novel mechanism offering morphogenesis robustness despite mechanical noise in the environment (#6). The latter involves Myosin II planar polarity at the cellular level and ensures the correct and stereotyped formation of folds in the developing tissue.
• Studying the mechanics of the envelope of the Drosophila developing leg, her lab revealed a physical and functional cell-matrix uncoupling of epithelial cell under tension (#7).
  
  Recent publications:

1-   Monier et al Nature 2015

2-   Ambronisi, Rayer, et al Dev Cell 2019.

3-   Roellig et al Dev Cell 2022

4-   Gracia et al, Nature Communication 2019.

5-   Manjón et al. Nat Cell Biol 2007.

6-   Martin, et al, Dev Cell 2021

7-   Proag et al,  Development 2019.