Frederic Bard did his graduate work at Yale University, USA and at the Ecole Normale Superieure of Lyon, France where he obtained his PhD. He elucidated the dynamics of the sealing zone, a unique actin cytoskeleton structure in osteoclasts required for bone resorption. During his postdoctoral work at the University of California San Diego (2001-2006), he identified a collection of new genes essential for general protein secretion, the TANGO genes.

Hormonal secretion for metabolic and behavioral regulation, extra-cellular matrix proteins secretion for tissue modeling, neurotransmitters secretion for synaptic function or mucus secretion for mucosa protection: these examples illustrate how much protein secretion is central to multiple aspects of human physiology and disease.

Thanks to the power of genetics in yeast, we now understand a lot of the basic machinery that controls the secretory process. However, cells of complex multicellular organisms such as humans have dramatically evolved to accommodate novel secretory functions unknown in yeast, for example the regulated secretion of hormones or mucus. In conjunction, the central organelle of the secretory pathway, the Golgi apparatus, has acquired a structural and functional complexity coupled to novel regulatory functions, such as regulation of entry into mitosis. This increase in complexity in the organization and functions of the secretory pathway involves molecular players unseen in lower eukaryotes and that we have only started to identify.

The group focus is to comprehensively characterize the genes that regulate the secretory apparatus specifically in higher eukaryotes by using a functional genomics approach, the RNA interference screen at the genome scale. (click here for more details).