Creativity

Creativity is essential in research. It's not only about asking the right question, it's a lot about how you ask the question. Technological advances drive scientific excellence and help push the boundaries of knowledge. I do admire people who "invent" new methodologies from scratch. I have a different set of skills: I assemble together pieces that are not meant to go together to create a new tool that will help me answer my questions. Here are a few examples:

1. I developed an in vivo luciferase reporter assay in chicken embryo to assess the regulation of the Wnt signaling pathway by Hox genes during embryonic axis elongation (see Denans et al., Elife, 2015)

2. I created my own 6-well imaging plates using a soldering iron and a 20c coin. This dramatically improved the imaging resolution (see Denans et al., Elife, 2015)

3. I engineered optogenetically controlled myosin motors that can transport actin modulators either at actin based protrusion tips or away from them. This allows for the precise control of actin protrusions both in space and time (see Zhang, Denans et al., 2021, Nature cell biology). Here's a video as an example https://youtu.be/MA2HU3E996k You will see in yellow the cell protrusions and in red the accumulation of the engineered motors upon light activation (blue dot).

4. I am currently engineering nanobodies to perform tissue specific protein degradation in vivo in zebrafish