Ariel Di Nardo

Ariel Di Nardo obtained his PhD thesis in 2003 at the University of Toronto (Toronto, CA) investigating evolutionarily conserved protein motifs and their role in protein folding mechanisms. He then joined the laboratory of Alain Prochiantz at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris, FR) to study how homeoprotein transcription factors regulate translation in neurons. He discovered the dendritic localization of the EN homeoprotein in the adult midbrain, and helped discover signaling activity of the OTX2 homeoprotein in the postnatal development and physiology of the visual system. Ariel Di Nardo was recruited by the CNRS in 2008 as a Senior Research Scientist in the laboratory of Pr. Alain Prochiantz where he continued to study mechanisms of homeoprotein signaling. He has shown that OTX2 in the cerebrospinal fluid regulates critical periods of neuronal circuit plasticity, notably for proper binocular vision and animal anxiety-like behavior. In addition to its fundamental aspects, his work has opened the field of transduction peptides and led to several biotechnological and biomedical developments. In 2019, Ariel was named co-director of a new LabCom at the Collège de France, and in 2021, he was named co-director of the Development & Neuropharmacology team.