Antoine Zalc

After a training period in Jeremy Brockes' lab in London, studying Salamenders regeneration, I did my PhD in the lab of Fred Relaix in Paris,where I deciphered how the paralogous paired-box transcription factors Pax3 and Pax7 control cell cycle progression and fates of progenitor cells in different tissues. From there, I became fascinated with the development of the cranial neural crest, an ectoderm-derived cell population with an extraordinary differentiation potential. During my postdoc with Joanna Wysocka at Stanford University, I dissected transcriptional changes that occur during the specification of the cranial neural crest using single cell RNA sequencing. I identified a precursor population that transiently reactivates pluripotency programs and presents genomic landscapes resembling those of pluripotent epiblast stem cells. This return into a pluripotent state is necessary for expansion of cranial neural crest cells potential beyond its germ layer of origin and generation of the facial mesenchyme.