At the BIOC lab, 50 years of research in molecular and cellular biology
On January 1st, 1975, the BIOC, the biochemistry laboratory, was officially created on the site of the Ecole Polytechnique which had just moved to Palaiseau. This was the School’s first biology laboratory.
“There was a desire to establish research and teaching in biology, more particularly in its aspects close to the already strong disciplines of X such as chemistry, physics and mathematics”
explains Yves Mechulam, CNRS research director at BIOC.
Jean-Pierre Waller, Sylvain Blanquet, Andrea Parmeggiani are setting up teams in this laboratory around a common theme: the mechanisms for decoding messenger RNA which allow the manufacture
of proteins in living organisms. To do this, we must focus on the molecules underlying the deciphering of the genetic code. Molecular biology is very recent because the double
helix structure of DNA was only elucidated in the 1950s and the genetic code itself was only deciphered in the 1960s.
From genetic code to proteins
“In all living cells, including those of our body, the process of translation of this genetic information into proteins takes place” explains Emmanuelle Schmitt, the current director of the BIOC.
Proteins are essential for life because they carry out most cellular functions, such as hemoglobin which carries oxygen in the blood. The first step in this process consists of copying DNA
into messenger RNA, made up of a sequence of nucleotide bases (A, C, G and U). This genetic message is then decoded during a complex mechanism by a real molecular machine, the ribosome,
which assembles amino acids to form proteins. It is the genetic code that provides the correspondence between the sequence of RNA bases and the amino acids that must be assembled.
Ribosomes are both markers of evolution, interesting to study from a fundamental point of view because of their presence in all areas of life (archaea, bacteria and eukaryotes) and because
they are involved in numerous diseases and in antibiotic or anticancer treatments.
From the molecular scale to the cellular scale
In the 1990s, BIOC became involved in the development of so-called structural biology. This makes it possible to reveal the atomic structure of molecules in order to understand their
mechanism of action. Protein crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy were developed. A computational biology team has also been created.
BIOC has also integrated cell biology into its field of expertise. Thus, in addition to studies of unicellular organisms such as bacteria and archaea, the laboratory has begun to study
the phenomenon of cell migration in multicellular organisms (particularly important in cancers such as breast cancer) or, more recently, neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer's, prion diseases, etc.).
This broadening of themes led the lab to become, in 2020, the Laboratory of Structural Biology of the Cell. The acronym BIOC, which has become known in the community, remains unchanged.
“In fifty years, the evolution of techniques has been spectacular” underlines Emmanuelle Schmitt. DNA sequencers, cryo-electron microscopy, CRISPR/cas9 molecular scissors
(which allow very precise modification of the genome), are among the scientific and technological advances that BIOC has quickly integrated. Artificial intelligence has also made a remarkable
entrance by providing a tool for predicting three-dimensional structures that draws on decades of experimental structural biology.
However, these advances have not resolved all the fundamental questions posed from the origins of the laboratory, as the mechanisms at play are so rich and complex.
There is much left to discover in the next fifty years.
*BIOC: a CNRS mixed research unit, École polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, 91120 Palaiseau, France