Recognizing featured Plant Cell first authors: Jérémy Scutenaire
Jérémy Scutenaire, first author of The YTH Domain Protein ECT2 Is an m6A Reader Required for Normal Trichome Branching in Arabidopsis
Current Position: Postdoc at the Institute of Genetic, Molecular and Cellular Biology (IGBMC), Illkirch, France
Education: PhD in plant molecular biology at the Plant Genome and Development Laboratory, University of Perpignan, France.
Non-scientific Interests: Fitness, hiking and music
During my master degree, I developed a growing interest in understanding how RNAs are regulated at the post-transcriptional level throughout development and in response to environmental stresses. I started my PhD in 2014 in Dr. Bousquet-Antonelli’s group at the Plant Genome and Development Laboratory, a period where the field of the dynamic RNA modifications was emerging as a new layer of gene expression regulation. At this moment, little was known about the role of the N6-methyladenosine (m6A) modification in the plant kingdom and the contribution of the decoding factors was still unexplored. I was really intrigued that plant genomes encoded many potential readers of this mark (i.e. YTH domain proteins) suggesting various ways to impact the fate of methylated RNAs. Among them, my PhD project focused more particularly on the physiological and molecular role of the ECT2 protein as an m6A reader in Arabidopsis. I recently joined the Institute of Genetic, Molecular and Cellular Biology (Strasbourg, France) in Dr. Seraphin’s team to study, with the same exciting interest, the role of m6A marks in yeast biology.
