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Biography
I am a associate professor in the Department of Neurosciences at the University of Montreal. I completed my doctoral and postdoctoral studies in molecular genetics of the skin and nervous system at McGill University. My research focuses on the identification and characterization of genes predisposing to malformations of the central nervous system and its associated skeletal structures. I am particularly interested in the molecular genetics of neural tube defects (NTD), and more recently scoliosis. My research group was the first to implicate the non-canonical Wnt/polarity pathway planar cell (PCP) in the etiology of NTD and to use whole exome sequencing to identify an important role of de novo mutations as well as new defective genes in NTD. I have extensively used the zebrafish model for functional validation of NTD-associated variants identified in PCP genes. I am currently investigating the pathogenesis of scoliosis using CRISPR knockout zebrafish models of PCP genes.