On January 1, 1975 was officially created the Bioc, the biochemistry laboratory, on the site of the Polytechnic School which had just settled in Palaiseau. It is then the first biology laboratory of the School. “There was a desire to establish research and teaching in biology, more particularly in its aspects close to the already strong disciplines of X such as chemistry, physics and mathematics,” explains Yves Mechulam, CNRS research director at Bioc.
Jean-Pierre Waller, Sylvain Blanquet, Andrea Parmeggiani set up teams in this laboratory around a common theme: the decoding mechanisms of messengers which allow the manufacture of proteins in living organisms. To do this, molecules must be interested in the base of deciphering the genetic code. Molecular biology is then very recent because the DNA double propeller structure was only elucidated in the 1950s and the genetic code itself was only deciphered in the 1960s.
From genetic protein to
“In all living cells, including those of our organism, the process of translation of this genetic information into protein information takes place,” explains Emmanuelle Schmitt, the current director of Bioc. Proteins are essential to life because they fulfill most cellular functions, such as hemoglobin which transports oxygen in the blood. The first step in this process consists in the copy of DNA in messenger RNA, made up of a sequence of nucleotide bases (A, C, G and U). This genetic message is then decoded during a complex mechanism by a real molecular machine, the ribosome, which assembles amino acids in order to form proteins. It is the genetic code that provides correspondence between the sequence of RNA bases and the amino acids that must be assembled.
Ribosomes are both markers of evolution, interesting to study from a fundamental point of view because of their presence in all living areas (archaea, bacteria and eukaryotes) and because they are involved in many diseases and in antibiotic or anticancer treatments.
From the molecular scale to the cellular scale
In the 1990s, BIOC embarked on the development of so -called structural biology. This makes it possible to reveal the atomic structure of the molecules in order to understand their mechanism of action. The crystallography of the proteins and then the electron cryo-microscopy were developed. A computational biology team has also been created.
Bioc has also integrated cell biology into its field of skills. Thus, in addition to the studies of unicellular organisms such as bacteria and archaea, the laboratory began to study the phenomenon of cell migration in multicellular organisms (particularly important in cancers like that of breast) or, more recently, neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer’s, prion diseases, etc.).
This enlargement of the themes led the lab to become, in 2020, the structural biology laboratory of the cell. The acronym Bioc, which has become known in the community, remains unchanged. “In fifty years, the evolution of techniques has been spectacular,” said Emmanuelle Schmitt. DNA sequencers, electron cryo-microscopy, CRISPR/CAS9 molecular scissors (which make it possible to modify the genome very precisely), are among the scientific and technological advances that the bioc has quickly integrated. Artificial intelligence has also made a remarkable entry by providing a three -dimensional structure prediction tool which is based on decades of experimental structural biology.
However, this progress has not resolved all the fundamental questions posed from the origins of the laboratory, as the mechanisms at stake are rich and complex. There is much to discover a lot in the next fifty years.
*Bioc: a mixed research unit CNRS, École Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, 91120 Palaiseau, France
