Deciphering the molecular dynamics & organization of the Ras signaling node in the control of the analog/digital signal processing – nanoDIGICODE

nanoDIGICODE is a project aiming at realizing breakthroughs at both the conceptual and technological level in the field of biology and health through the strong collaborations between the three teams.

The events of cellular signaling, in answer to the integration of many stimuli, constitute the basis of many physiological, as well as pathological processes. The associated signaling cascades, initiated by the binding of an often restricted number of ligands to cell membrane receptors, correspond to complex enzymatic reactions, being held on potentially very restricted spatiotemporal scales. Our recent works have provided a fundamental description of the cell membrane organization at high spatiotemporal resolution, in relation with associated functional implications for cell signaling and physiology. The need to extend these observations all along the signaling pathways constitutes a challenge for current advanced techniques of microscopy.

More specifically, the nanoDIGICODE project aims at monitoring how cells respond in a decisive manner (digital) to the graded (analog) input of increasing amounts of receptor stimulation, by using state-of-the-art biophotonic technologies, including both fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) and its derivative methods, as well as super-resolution microscopy techniques. With the use of our recently implemented holographic optical tweezers microscope (HOT), we will control in time and space the exact amount of stimulated receptors.

We expect from a large panel of different observation to depict important new insights in the mechanisms of the signal interpretation for pathway in which the small GTPase Ras proteins represent a critical node of signaling.