My name is Fabien Sénéchal and I started a postdoc in Christian Fankhauser’s group on March 1st 2016.

I come from France, where I did my PhD thesis and a postdoc supervised by Jérôme Pelloux in department of plant biology and innovation at the University of Picardie Jules Verne. My research projects were mainly related to the understanding of the cell wall pectin remodeling in control of plant growth. Specifically, I have studied the regulation of the pectin modifying enzymes by some inhibitors and proteases, and their functional role in anisotropic growth of the etiolated hypocotyl. 

In Christian Fankhauser’s group, I will be interested by the shade avoidance response, characterized by an elongated hypocotyl in the shade conditions to restore the access to sunlight. Using the shaded hypocotyl as a growth model, I will study how the cell wall mechanical and biochemical properties affect the shade avoidance response. Then I would like understand how are regulated some cell wall proteins in shaded hypocotyl and how they affect the cell wall remodeling.