Yasmine CANTAUT-BELARIF

Yasmine Cantaut-Belarif obtained her doctorate at the Institute of Biology of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Pierre and Marie Curie University in 2015. Led by A. Triller and A. Bessis, she has demonstrated the contribution of microglia, the immune cells of the nervous system, to the nanoscale dynamics of postsynaptic components in mouse spinal cord. In 2016, she joined C. Wyart's team for her post-doctoral work and studied the role of cerebrospinal fluid in zebrafish during development. She has shown that a polymer preserved in the cavities of vertebrate brain and spinal cord described more than a century ago, called Reissner's fibre, controls the straightening of developing embryos. As a CNRS researcher at Paris Brain Institute since 2020, her research now focuses on identifying long-range signalling events and molecular pathways from cerebrospinal fluid that influence morphogenesis at the embryonic and post-embryonic stages.

This work aims to understand the mechanisms by which cerebrospinal fluid communicates with peripheral organs to ensure correct alignment of the posterior axis of the body from embryonic to postembryonic. Using zebrafish as an animal model, they combine the power of genetics and in vivo imaging to:

• identify long-range signalling pathways from brain and spinal cord cavities that influence morphogenesis,
• understand how these signals are integrated to ensure proper body shape.