Christine Petit
Christine Petit
Christine Petit graduated in medicine from Pierre et Marie Curie University (Paris VI) and in basic biological sciences, genetics and biochemistry from Orsay University (Paris XI). She received her PhD at the Institut Pasteur. In 2002, she was appointed Professor at College de France where she holds the chair of Genetics and Cellular Physiology. She is currently the head of the Genetics and Physiology of Hearing laboratory at Institut Pasteur. Professor Petit is an elected Fellow of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, USA, and a member of the French Academy of Sciences.
Christine Petit is a geneticist and a neurobiologist with a particular interest in deafness and hearing, who is internationally renowned for her work on human hereditary sensory disorders. She has pioneered research in this field, revealing the molecular physiology of the cochlea and discovering new physiological properties of this sensory organ. She initiated the assessment of the molecular mechanisms underlying sound processing in the peripheral auditory system via the genes involved in deafness. She discovered more than twenty such genes, 90% of them encoding previously unknown proteins.
Through in-depth, multidisciplinary analysis, involving engineered deaf mouse mutants, Christine Petit and her colleagues have unravelled the molecular mechanisms involved in the development and the functioning of the hair bundle (the sensory antenna of the hair cells), the synaptic connections between hair cells and auditory nerve fibres, the formation of the tectorial membrane which transfers the sensory stimulation to the hair bundle, and the maintenance of the ionic composition of the fluid surrounding hair cells. By elucidating the pathogenesis of dozens of forms of deafness, including the most frequent form caused by a connexin defect, her discoveries have had a major impact on daily medical practice, regarding both diagnosis and therapeutic decisions.
The current focus of Christine Petit’s laboratory is to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying sound processing in the auditory system and how hearing impairment arise when these mechanisms become defective. The hair bundle, which plays a central role in sound processing, is a main focus of her research. How it is shaped, how basic functions such as mechanotransduction, frequency tuning, waveform distortion and suppressive masking are achieved, how the interaction between these functions is ensured and how its properties are coupled to its cytoarchitecture are some of the key issues that she is addressing.
Recently, she has extended her study of sound processing to the central auditory system. Her new research aims include the development of novel approaches to prevent and to treat hearing impairment.
The Brain Prize 2012 is also awarded to:
