Isabelle Mansuy

Biography

Isabelle completed a PhD in Developmental Neurobiology at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland and the Université Louis Pasteur Strasbourg, France, then a postdoc in the lab of Eric Kandel at the Center for Learning and Memory at Columbia University in New York. She was appointed Assistant Professor in Neurobiology at the ETHZ in Dec 1998, then Associate Professor in Molecular Cognition at UZH and ETHZ in 2005 and Full Professor in Neuroepigenetics in 2013.

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I. Mansuy’s research examines the epigenetics of complex brain functions in mammals, particularly the mechanisms of inheritance of acquired traits across generations. She started her research career working on the molecular mechanisms of memory using conditional transgenic mouse models she established. She identified the Ser/Thr protein phosphatases calcineurin and PP1 as suppressors of memory and their role in the epigenetic control of memory formation and synaptic plasticity in the adult brain. She also demonstrated their implication in aging-related cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegeneration.

Her current research studies the mechanisms by which behavioral and physiological traits can be modified by life experiences in childhood and are passed to descendants via the germline. The goal is to determine the molecular and cellular processes underlying the influence of adverse life events on mental and physical health and their link with psychiatric and metabolic disorders in exposed parents and their descendants. It uses animal models and cellular systems to study the involvement of non-coding RNAs, epigenetic factors and chromatin remodeling in the brain and germline, in the expression and transmission of environmentally-induced phenotypes. It also investigates the potential reversibility of epigenetic alterations and symptoms induced by traumatic stress and the relevance of the findings in mice for humans exposed to childhood trauma.

Research at the Mansuy lab is conceptually and technically innovative and the lab is pioneer in the field of epigenetic inheritance, a discipline at the forefront of a paradigm shift in genetics. 

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Check I. Mansuy's wiki-page for more information.