The people behind the papers – Sonia Dufour and Julia Morales

The mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) signalling pathway is a highly conserved signalling cascade that regulates cellular and metabolic homeostasis, including synthesis of proteins, lipids and nucleotides. In their recent work, Sonia Dufour, Julia Morales, Fernando Roch and colleagues find that in sea urchin embryos, mTOR promotes lysosome biogenesis - despite inhibiting this process in somatic cells - by translationally activating lysosomal components, thereby facilitating energy production and nutrient recycling. To learn more about their work, we spoke to the first author, Sonia Dufour, and the corresponding author, Julia Morales, Research Scientist at the Roscoff Biological Station and Head of the Translation, Cell Cycle and Development (TCCD) team at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France.