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Isabelle Mansuy is September’s featured Faculty Member of the Month. She is a professor in neuroepigenetics at the Medical Faculty of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich (double chair), she is a Member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences and the European Academy of Sciences, and a Knight in the National Order of Merit and holds the Legion of Honour in France.

She obtained a Ph.D. in developmental neurobiology at the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, then trained as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Eric Kandel at the Center for Learning and Memory at Columbia University in New York.

Since 1998, she has been running a research lab in Zurich, which studies brain functions and behaviour in mammals, and is a pioneer in the new field of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. They discovered that traumatic experiences in early postnatal life can lead to behavioural symptoms like depression, social withdrawal, risk-taking and poor memory, as well as metabolic dysfunctions across several generations, and that the inheritance of the symptoms depends on epigenetic mechanisms in the germline.

Isabelle explains the importance of animal research to improve our understanding of epigenetic inheritance and as a diagnostic for trauma-related psychiatric disorders.

What triggered your interest in this research?

I’ve always been interested in the molecular mechanisms of complex brain functions and a key moment that initiated my research in transgenerational epigenetic inheritance was when the idea emerged that the effects of trauma on brain functions could be transmitted to the following generation.

That was not a trivial idea but rather a non-conventional way to approach the brain. We had a mouse model of traumatic stress in the lab. I initially had a hard time convincing my student to generate and test the offspring. But she did, and it was successful, we found that the offspring had symptoms similar to the parents, even though it was only the parents who were directly exposed to treatment.

Our findings in experimental animals are important for biological research because they provide evidence that early life experiences can leave traces across generations through epigenetic mechanisms. They are also essential for the clinic, as they will help with the development of future diagnostic and therapeutic treatments against trauma-related psychiatric disorders.

What was your last recommendation and why did you pick it?

My last recommendation was a paper describing the regulation of transposable elements by transfer RNAs fragments in embryonic stem cells. I picked it because it is an original and well conducted study revealing a novel mode of regulation of retrotransposons and a yet unknown function of transfer RNAs fragments.

These fragments have recently appeared as important molecules but such role in something as fundamental as retrotransposon regulation was unexpected and is very important.

What would you say is the best piece of career advice that you received that you would like to pass on to early career researchers?

A piece of advice that I actually did not receive myself but would like to pass on to early career researchers, particularly young women, is to do research that you’re passionate about. One needs to be fully motivated to find the energy to work hard, struggle and accept the sacrifices and frustrations associated with an academic career.