Etienne Herzog

With an initial training in molecular genetics and biotechnology, I focus my research on the molecular characterization of neurotransmitter systems in the rodent brain. I first contributed to the characterization of the 3 vesicular glutamate transporters and used VGLUTs as markers of synapses and synaptic vesicles of glutamatergic neurons. Our more recent work built on the VGLUT1venus knock-in mice I generated as a fellow with Prof Nils Brose (MPIEM, Goettingen). Through fluorescence imaging on VGLUT1venus mouse model samples we characterized several features of synaptic vesicle trafficking at glutamatergic synapses and axons. More recently, we established the purification of synaptosomes from adult brain tissue using fluorescence activated sorting, a method we named FASS. We now explore the local molecular composition of synapses using highly purified populations of synaptosomes. We aim at unravelling the molecular diversity of synapses required to build functional neuron circuits.