PRBB-CRG Sessions Irene Miguel-Aliaga

25/10/202412:00MARIE CURIEPRBB-CRG SessionsIrene Miguel-AliagaThe Francis Crick Institute"The sex and geometry of organs"Host: Juan ValcarcelAbstract:I am interested in how information is encoded at the multi-organ level. Working at the interface between physiology and developmental biology, we have explored the “continued development” of adult organs. We have sought to understand how and why organs such as the intestine grow, shrink and are metabolically remodelled even in adult, fully developed animals, and how this plasticity differs between the sexes. We have tackled these questions across biological scales, initially in Drosophila and more recently in mice and humans. Our worked has uncovered new mechanisms of sex differentiation as well as previously unrecognised communication between gut and gonads that impacts food intake, gamete production and tumour susceptibility. Some of our work has also investigated how the intestine senses and responds to nutrients: we discovered an intestinal zinc sensor that promotes Tor signalling to sustain food intake and developmental growth. I have now become very interested in the idea that there is a logic to the shape and arrangement of organs within the body cavity. We have developed new methods to visualise and quantify organs in 3D in their natural environment. We can now interrogate these multi-organ configurations to ask how organ shape impacts organ function and that of its neighbours, and whether organ geometry enables or confines communication across organs.