Biochemical Journal Metabolism Poster Prize winner

Louise Lantier

Louise Lantier received a Master's Degree in 2007 from the Ecole de Biologie Industrielle in Cergy, France. At the Université Paris Descartes (Paris, France), she was granted a Ph.D. scholarship in the laboratory of Benoit Viollet (INSERM U1016, Institut Cochin, Paris, France) to study the role of AMPK in skeletal muscle metabolism. AMPK is a serine/threonine protein kinase that functions as an intracellular energy sensor by facilitating ATP production and suppressing unnecessary ATP use in energy-stressed cells. By generating and using animal models deficient for the catalytic subunits of AMPK (global AMPKa1 KO, global AMPKa2 KO, muscle-specific AMPKa1/a2 KO) or muscle cells isolated from these animals, she has investigated the role of AMPK in the adaptation of cellular metabolism in the skeletal muscle via the regulation of fatty acid oxidation, glucose uptake, and protein synthesis. She has particularly studied the direct effect of AMPK deletion in muscle, confirming the importance of AMPK in the control of muscle cell size and energy metabolism.