Antoine Triller

Brief CV

Antoine Triller is Director of Research at the Institut National de la Santé de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM). He obtained his MD in 1978, and his DSc in 1985 from the University Pierre and Marie Curie, while being at the Pasteur Institute. He worked initially on synaptic inhibitory neurotransmission with Henri Korn, correlating quantal parameters of release with the ultrastructure of the synapse. In 1985 he could establish that glycine receptors form postsynaptic microdomains. It was then the first ultrastructural visualization of a receptor in the CNS. In 1995 he joined the Department of Biology at the Ecole Normale Supérieure where he settled a group working on the cellular biology of synapses. The work of his lab focuses on the cell biology and molecular mechanisms of receptor accumulation at synapses during development and plasticity and its interactions with the immune system. With his group he has established the role of the presynaptic inhibitory afferent terminals in the postsynaptic accumulation of glycine and GABA receptors. He was also able to show that glycine receptor mRNAs are transported toward the postsynaptic membrane where he could demonstrate the presence of a micro-machinery for synthesis and insertion of receptor. Since few years he has focused on synaptic receptor dynamics combining cell biology with high-resolution real-time imaging. In the last year, together with physicist he has developed new methods using quantum dots to study single receptors movements in the neuronal plasma membrane.

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