About her PhD project

Although the nervous system is mainly left-right (L-R) symmetric at the structural level, some functional LR asymmetries exist. Defects in the lateralization of the nervous system can lead to neurological disorders such as dyslexia. However, the extent of these functional L-R asymmetries and their origins remain poorly characterized. C. elegans is a good system to study this process as its nervous system is simple, and the position and lineage of every neuron has been mapped. Recently single cell RNAseq data have been generated for nearly all cells during embryogenesis and at larval stage. We propose here to combine these expression data with the lineage and the spatial localization of cells using applied mathematics approaches to identify novel molecular asymmetries in the nervous system. These asymmetries will then be experimentally validated using single molecule FISH expression profiling, and their consequences on the organization and function of the nervous system will be tested using CRISPR loss of function.