Constance Petit
Cell biologist who showed, in Shawn Ferguson's lab at Yale, that folliculin moves onto lysosomes when amino acids run out and is needed to switch on the Rag GTPases
Department of Molecular Metabolism, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Farese and Walther lab (2020, most recent paper) · Department of Cell Biology, Yale University School of Medicine, Shawn Ferguson lab (2012–2013) · Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers, Paris, Sophie Thenet group (2008–2013)
Portrait: ResearchGate
Constance Petit is first author of the Atlas study PET2013 from Shawn Ferguson's lab at Yale. mTORC1, the growth-control complex, is switched on at the surface of lysosomes, the cell's recycling compartments, when amino acids are available. Small switch proteins called Rag GTPases do the recruiting. The open question was which protein flips the Rags into their active state.
Petit and colleagues found that folliculin (FLCN), the protein lost in the inherited Birt-Hogg-Dube syndrome, gathers on lysosomes when amino acids are withdrawn and binds RagA directly. Cells without folliculin could not recruit mTORC1 to lysosomes when amino acids were added back. This placed folliculin at the amino acid switch of mTORC1. The study used cultured human cells. Petit was also a co-author on the 2012 Ferguson lab paper showing that mTORC1 phosphorylates the transcription factor TFEB at lysosomes (ROC2012).
Before Yale, Petit worked in Sophie Thenet's group at the Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers in Paris on the cellular prion protein and the junctions that seal the gut lining, including a 2012 study on its role in the intestinal barrier and in inflammatory bowel disease. In 2020 PubMed lists Petit as first author in Robert Farese and Tobias Walther's lab at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, showing that blocking sphingolipid synthesis improved survival in a mouse model of motor neuron degeneration. No later position could be confirmed.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | M | Recruitment of folliculin to lysosomes supports the amino acid-dependent activation of Rag GTPases PET2013 First author: showed in human cells that folliculin moves to lysosomes on amino acid withdrawal, binds RagA and is needed for amino acid-driven mTORC1 recruitment. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Constance Petit.
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- Shawn M. Ferguson Showed that mTORC1 phosphorylates TFEB to keep the lysosome-building program switched off, and that folliculin is required at the lysosome for amino acids to recruit and activate mTORC1
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