The Houart Lab aims to understand the cellular, molecular and morphogenetic mechanisms required to build the vertebrate forebrain. Comparative studies using zebrafish and mouse are designed to explore the regulatory changes generating forebrain diversity in vertebrates. We are exploring the impact of signalling pathways in cell migration and identifying key downstream targets of proteins triggering neurodegeneration in Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Human Spastic Paraplegia (HSP). Cell ablation and transplantation, genetics, high-throughput molecular biology and in vivo imaging are used to achieve our goals.
