Nicolas Chiaruttini
My main project focuses on the evolutionary conserved complex ESCRT-III, which is critical in enveloped-virus spreading, cell division and many other processes. This complex is thought to fission lipid membranes, but how deformation and membrane pinching occurs is mysterious.
Escrt-III makes curved linear filaments which are tightly bound to lipid membranes. I developed highly quantitative in vitro assays that have led us to postulate a completely new mechanism by which a lipid membrane can be deformed. How fission is occurring is still unknown, and getting further understanding requires challenging experimental developments and a very strong integration of biological data within physical modelling.
Having been trained as a physicist and as a biologist, I did my PhD under the supervision of Virgile Viasnoff, at the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles in Paris, where I worked on nanopore DNA sequencing and on reconstituted systems of bacteriophage infection.
I joined the Roux lab where I’ve developed several assays to unravel the mechanism of lipid membrane fission. In parallel of this main project, I make several computing developpements, from biological polymer modeling to image processing.