Subject
Our lab is interested in deciphering the codes of life. In particular, we want to understand how genomic programs, which allow organism to grow and develop in sync with periodic changes, are encoded and regulated. In addition, we are also interested in applying the acquired knowledge to develop new biomedical and/or agricultural tools and products that will help improving life on this planet. In particular, we want to understand how plants measure time and use this information to anticipate seasonal changes. We want to identify all the regulatory components of the plant biological clock and calendar. Finally, our aim is to understand the general rules operating at transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels, which contribute to daily and seasonal oscillations in gene expression networks associated with the control plant growth and development.

Approach
To achieve the above aims, we use a combination of genomic, genetic, molecular, biochemical and physiological approaches. We mostly use Arabidopsis as a model organism to answer our questions of interest, but we also use other organisms, such as potato, soybean and tomato, to test the agricultural relevance of our findings.

Advances
Over the last 15 years, we have contributed to identify more than 10 genes that modulate the function of the plant circadian network, including both core clock components such as the members of the LNK gene family, as well as genes that influence the circadian network because they are key regulators of post-transcriptional processes such as alternative splicing. Indeed, we were the first to identify a role for splicing regulatory factors, such as as PRMT5, in the modulation of the function of plant and animal circadian networks.