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Head: Jacques Pécréaux

Location: 2 Avenue du Professeur Léon Bernard, 35000 Rennes, France
The CeDRE team, led by Jacques Pécréaux (CRCN CNRS) is multidisciplinary, teaming up biologists, physicists and mathematicians. They are interested in mechanical aspects of cell division to understand its dynamical aspects and ultimately the extra-ordinary faithfulness of mitosis. Therefore, the team finely quantifies biological phenomena to recapitulate the results using physical models. In particular, the team performs advanced data analysis and modelling. It includes the fine tracking of spots like the tips of the microtubule, or super-resolution positioning of the centrosomes at a high frame rate (tens of frames per sec.). The obtained tracks are analysed statistically (for example, to classify the dynamics, reduce the dimension using PCA) or using Fourier spectral analysis to fingerprint the underlying mechanisms. To take full advantage of this data analysis, we model the sub-cellular mechanics during mitosis, in particular, the one grounded on microtubules, molecular motors and associated regulators on the one hand. On the other hand, we use agent-based simulations, especially cytosim, to screen for the variety of behaviours without solving the analytical equations. Finally, the team contributes to developing autonomous microscope by enslaving the driving of the microscope to on-the-fly analysis of acquired images, in particular using machine and deep learning.