Images developped by Stéphanie Cassant-Sourdy
3rd SPHERES Consortium Meeting in Nice
From November 25th to 27th, a total of 45 members of the SPHERES team got together in Nice, at the Saint Paul hotel, to present the progress made by the different participants involved in the project during the four years that the SPHERES grant has been running. They reflected together about the next steps and missions to be made, in order to achieve the objectives defined in the project.
SPHERES is a Synergy project funded by the European Research Commission. The goal of SPHERES is to understand the dynamics and consequences of the enlargement of adipocytes through investigation of its lipid droplet (LD). Adipocyte hypertrophy due to an increase in LD size may, irrespective of body fat mass, cause a wide range of pathological conditions, notably cardiometabolic diseases. SPHERES Pis are Dominique Langin (Université de Toulouse III Paul Sabatier), Mikael Rydén (Karolinska Insitutet) and Brunno Antonny (CNRS, IPBM). The INSERM and the Côte d'Azur University participate in the projet as third parties.
The first day of the conference was focused on summarising the recent SPHERES scientific report and main results through four different topics:
- Correlation profiles in proteomic studies of LD coverage in adipocytes (presentation by Danae Zareifi & Maureen Verdier, from KI team)
- Modelling adipocyte (dys)function (presentation by Dominique Langin, PI from UT3)
- The adipocyte portal (presentation by Lucas Massier, from KI team (and now Helmholtz, Leipzig)
- Why do LDs in adipocytes contain triglycerides with short chain fatty acids? (presentation by David Kovacs, from CNRS Valbonne (and now University of Szeged)
On the second day, researchers were more focused on highlighting ongoing projects through 8 presentations:
- Looking for new proteins sensing LD surface tension (presentation by Akim Bello, CNRS Valbonne)
- Molecular and cell studies on PLIN4 LDs (presentation by Cyril Moulin, CNRS Montpellier)
- PLCXD1 (presentation by Scott Frendo-Cumbo, KI team and Rita Araujo & Joëlle Bigay, CNRS Valbonne)
- PLIN1 mutants in human adipocyte and mouse models (presentation by Geneviève Tavernier & Henrik Laurell, UT3 team)
- HSL subcellular partitioning and access to its substrates (presentation by Laura Bottin, UT3 team)
- Behavior of Plins in cells (presentation by Alenka Copic, CNRS Montpellier)
- Adipocyte heterogeneity (presentation by Jutta Jalkanen KI team)
- Lipolysis, lipid droplets and thermogenesis in brown adipocytes (presentation by Etienne Mouisel, UT3 team)
A Poster session & technical notes:
Posters : Sylvie Rouquier (CNRS Montpellier), Rita Araujo (CNRS Valbonne), Merve Elmastas (KI), Delphine Debayle (CNRS Valbonne)
Slides: Julie Cazareth (CNRS Valbonne), Céline Franckhauser (CNRS Montpellier), Cyril Moulin (CNRS Montpellier), Sophie Weinbrenner (KI), Romain Gautier (CNRS Valbonne), Joëlle Bigay & Bruno Antonny (CNRS, Valbonne)
And 3 round tables: Lipid droplet heterogeneity, Proteins on lipid droplets, Lipases.
