COSTE Bertrand

Bertrand Coste Research is funded from the European Research Council/ERC Grant Agreement n. 678610.

Mechanosensation refers to our ability to perceive touch, pain and proprioception through our somatosensory system, constituting with vision, olfaction and hearing the crucial senses governing our perception of surrounding environment and our social interactions. Mechanosensation relies on mechanotransduction, the signaling by which external mechanical stimuli are converted into biological signals within the cell. Molecular mechanosensors of the somato-sensory system are mechanically-activated ion channels, which identification constitutes one of the most important challenges in the field of sensory transduction. Our goal is to characterize mechanosensation from molecular to behavior levels.