Laure Bally-Cuif
Studies how adult neural stem cells in the zebrafish brain move between dormancy and activation
Head, Zebrafish Neurogenetics Unit, Department of Developmental and Stem Cell Biology, Institut Pasteur (CNRS UMR3738)
Zebrafish Neurogenetics Unit, Institut Pasteur (Paris, France) ↗
Portrait: Institut Pasteur
Laure Bally-Cuif did her PhD in Paris, at the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière and the École Normale Supérieure, and was an EMBO postdoctoral fellow at Princeton. She joined the CNRS in 1996, led an independent group at the Helmholtz Center in Munich from 2000, became a CNRS research director at the Paris-Saclay Institute for Neuroscience in 2009, and has headed her unit at the Institut Pasteur since 2016.
Her lab uses the adult zebrafish brain, which keeps making new neurons throughout life, to study how neural stem cells stay dormant and when they wake up. A 2026 preprint from the group reports that mTORC1 activity is enriched during a long quiescent phase in which these stem cells become able to activate, and that mTORC1 sets the tempo of that progression while protecting stemness.
Milestones in the Atlas
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | PP | mTORC1 supports progression toward activation competence in quiescent adult neural stem cells THE2026 Senior author (preprint): mTORC1 sets the tempo of quiescent neural stem cells' progression toward activation. |