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JCS PRIZE

2014 Winners: Anne-Lise Gaffuri and Elizabeth Crowell

Michael Way (Editor-in-Chief)

We are pleased to announce that the joint winners of the 2014 JCS Prize are Anne-Lise Gaffuri and Elizabeth Crowell for their ><paper

entitled ‘Engulfment of the midbody remnant after cytokinesis in mammalian cells’ (Crowell et al., 2014).

The prize, $1000, is awarded annually to the first author of the paper that is judged by the Editors and Editorial Board to be the best

eligible paper published in the Journal of Cell Science that year. To be considered for the prize, the first author must be a student or a

postdoc of no more than five years standing.

Elizabeth Crowell was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and

earned her bachelor’s degree in Indiana. Her interest in combatting

cancer started with her first experience in research, at the Brown

Cancer Center in Louisville, Kentucky. She participated in a

project developing a vaccine against the human papillomavirus,

which is responsible for virtually all cases of cervical cancer. Led

by A. Bennett Jenson, she worked to genetically engineer tobacco

plants to produce the viral capsid protein constituting the vaccine

for subsequent inexpensive production and purification.

Convinced by the potential of biotechnology to improve lives,

she went on to complete a master’s degree at Michigan State

University. There, she worked on a collaborative project with the

biochemist Dean Dellapenna and plant breeder David Douches to

genetically engineer potatoes that accumulate vitamin E. After

publishing her results in early 2007, she made two main changes in

her career. First, she turned towards fundamental research and,

second, she moved to France, joining her husband who had just

been hired as an assistant professor in nuclear physics.

Elizabeth was recruited at the French National Institute for

Agricultural Research (INRA) in Versailles on a French National

Research Agency (ANR) PhD grant. Her PhD advisors, Samantha

Vernhettes and Martine Gonneau, helped her rapidly gain the

new skills in microscopy essential for studying the intracellular

trafficking of cellulose synthase complexes. She completed her

PhD in three years and published groundbreaking discoveries on

the role of the cytoskeleton in plant cell wall deposition.

Elizabeth’s expertise in image analysis and her passion for

programming made her an interesting postdoctoral candidate, and

she obtained a position in Arnaud Echard’s team at the Institut

Pasteur in Paris. Using live cell imaging, she set out to study the

fate of the midbody, a structure formed within the intercellular

bridge at cytokinesis and implicated in cancerogenesis. Surprisingly,

Elizabeth Crowell Anne-Lise Gaffuri

� 2015. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd | Journal of Cell Science (2015) 128, 1255–1256 doi:10.1242/jcs.169847

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the midbody was not degraded by autophagy as previouslydescribed, but migrated freely over the cell membrane before

being engulfed in a process that resembles phagocytosis. Thisdiscovery was explored further by using cell biology techniques,and revealed that midbody engulfment occurs in all cell lines tested(Crowell, et al., 2014), and in collaboration with the biophysicist

Jean-Yves Tinevez, which permitted to simulate midbody turnoverin a dynamic cell population (Crowell, et al., 2013).

Now living in Normandy, Elizabeth is pursuing her scientific

career in the private sector, with emphasis on the bio-informaticsfield.

Anne-Lise Gaffuri grew up in Paris, France. After two years

of preparatory classes for French engineering schools in biology,chemistry and physics, she studied chemistry and physics in aprestigious French Institute, the ESPCI-ParisTech. In parallel, she

also studied cell biology at the University Pierre and Marie Curie.In 2009, she graduated as an engineer in chemistry and physics,and obtained a master’s degree in cell biology.

Following her Master internship, Anne-Lise started a PhD under

the supervision of Zsolt Lenkei in the Neuronal structure anddynamics lab (ESPCI-ParisTech). In order to better understand therole of different signalling pathways in neuronal plasticity

and, in particular, learning and memory formation, she aimed tocombine the power of Drosophila genetics with the experimentalaccessibility and single-cell resolution of low-density primary

neuronal cultures. As this tool was lacking, she successfullydeveloped a simple and efficient new method to maintain low-densitycultures of primary Drosophila neurons. Anne-Lise applied this new

method to study compartmentalized cAMP/PKA activation in themushroom body, the Drosophila olfactory memory center because,although this phenomenon had been demonstrated to be crucial forthe formation of memory, the molecular mechanisms of long-range

intraneuronal signaling were still unknown. Using her knowledge ofphysics and imaging, Anne-Lise mapped the cAMP/PKA-signalling dynamics in individual axons of mature Drosophila

neurons that had been grown in compartmentalized microfluidicdevices and expressing genetically encoded Forster resonance

energy transfer (FRET)-based probes. Her results indicated thatrapidly diffusing axonal cAMP is a long-range signalling moleculein neurons that could be responsible for long-term memoryformation. In 2012, Anne-Lise obtained her PhD with high

honours and decided to start a postdoc at the Institut Pasteur inParis under the supervision of Arnaud Echard.

Upon joining the team, Anne-Lise started working on the

determination of the fate of the midbody ring after cell division.As studies had suggested that remnant accumulation has a role incell differentiation and proliferation, understanding the fate of

remnants and how they accumulate was a key question in thefield. During her postdoc, Anne-Lise demonstrated in a variety ofimmortalized and primary cells that the great majority

of remnants are actually cut twice, and that they move forseveral hours to the cell surface, where they are engulfed by a‘phagocytic-like mechanism’ that relies on actin- and cation-dependent receptors. Surprisingly, remnants can be exchanged

between sister and even non-sister cells. Thus, our studypublished in Journal of Cell Science changed the understandingof how remnants are inherited and degraded in mammalian cells,

by suggesting a mechanism of how remnants signal over longdistances between cells (Crowell, et al., 2014).

Since September 2014, Anne-Lise has been working as a

researcher at Adocia, a Biotechnology Company located in Lyon,France, that specialises in the development of formulations forinnovative delivery of different types of insulin, therapeutic

proteins and anticancer drugs.

ReferencesCrowell, E. F., Tinevez, J. Y. and Echard, A. (2013). A simple model for the fateof the cytokinesis midbody remnant: implications for remnant degradation byautophagy. Bioessays. 35, 472-481.

Crowell, E. F., Gaffuri, A. L., Gayraud-Morel, B., Tajbakhsh, S. and Echard, A.(2014). Engulfment of the midbody remnant after cytokinesis in mammaliancells. J. Cell Sci. 127, 3840-3851.

JCS PRIZE Journal of Cell Science (2015) 128, 1255–1256 doi:10.1242/jcs.169847

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