Collaboration with Emmanuelle Meugnier, the genomics platform manager of the CarMeN laboratory at Lyon-Sud hospital

Melissa Yepmo, PhD student at CeeD, focuses her research on the unique signature of circular RNA within human skeletal muscle and its impact on muscle and pancreatic islet metabolism. To develop her project, she had the opportunity to get the help of Emmanuelle Meugnier, the genomics platform manager of the CarMeN laboratory at Lyon-Sud hospital.

The pathologies of diabetes are complex and affect numerous organs such as the liver, pancreas and skeletal muscle. CircRNAs designate an emerging class of non-coding RNAs that is still very unexplored, but initial studies have recently shown that circRNAs are involved in the regulation of insulin secretion. Therefore, deregulation of this class of RNAs may lead to metabolic disorders in pancreatic β-cells and thus be involved in the pathogenesis of type 1 diabetes (T1DM) and type 2 diabetes (T2DM).

Our work with Emmanuelle Meugnier especially focuses on circRNA, by detecting them by qPCR with new protocols. We also sought to identify these circRNAs in skeletal muscles using high-throughput sequencing techniques. This work has enabled Mélissa Yepmo to expand herknowledge of genomics and to set up new protocols to improve circRNAs detection.