Nathalie Bouquier
Built AIMTOR, a glowing biosensor that lets researchers watch mTOR activity move around inside a living cell in real time
Research Engineer, Perroy Team, Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle, CNRS · Université de Montpellier
Perroy Team, Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle (IGF), CNRS/INSERM/Université de Montpellier (Montpellier, France) ↗ ORCID0000-0002-4827-7303 ↗
Portrait: Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle (IGF), CNRS
Nathalie Bouquier is a research engineer in Julie Perroy's team in Montpellier, where she works on tools that make it possible to see cell signaling as it happens rather than reconstructing it afterward from snapshots.
For this study she helped build and validate AIMTOR, a genetically encoded biosensor that gives off a light signal whenever mTOR is active nearby. Because the sensor can be targeted to specific spots in the cell — the cytosol, the lysosome surface, the nucleus, near mitochondria — it let the team watch mTORC1 activity rise and fall in different compartments during muscle-cell differentiation and after amino-acid stimulation, and even catch mTOR-signaling abnormalities in neurons from mouse models of autism.
Milestones in the Atlas
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | M | AIMTOR, a BRET biosensor for live imaging, reveals subcellular mTOR signaling and dysfunctions BOU2020 Helped build and validate AIMTOR, a light-emitting biosensor that tracks mTOR activity live in specific parts of a cell, and used it to watch mTORC1 respond to amino acids during muscle-cell differentiation. |
Co-authors in the Atlas
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Nathalie Bouquier.
- Julie Perroy Neurobiologist who co-led AIMTOR, a biosensor for watching mTOR activity live in single cells and in separate parts of the cell
- Vincent Ollendorff Co-led the Montpellier team that built AIMTOR, a light-emitting biosensor for watching mTOR activity inside living cells, as part of his work on muscle metabolism