I started my career by a training in flavor science and industry at the ISIPCA in Versailles and an industry experience as a sensory analyst in the Bel group. Attracted by understanding the mechanisms involved in the sense of smell, I decided to reorient towards academic research in 2012.
I got my Ph.D. in 2015 in computational chemistry at Université Côte d’Azur (FR) where I investigated the molecular mechanisms involved in odorant receptor recognition of odorant molecules thanks to molecular modelling protocols.
In 2016, I joined the Matsunami lab at Duke University (NC, USA) to continue studying how odorant receptors are used to trigger an odor percept but on the bench side. I acquired new skills in receptor biology and GPCR functional expression and installed molecular modelling expertise to study OR function, evolution, and expression in international collaborations. In 2020, I received the NIH award K99/R00 (15% success rate), supporting my own postdoctoral research (K99) and the opening of my laboratory in the US (R00). We obtained the first structure of mammalian ORs in collaboration with Pr. Hiroaki Matsunami (Duke), Dr. Aashish Manglik (UCSF) and Pr. Nagarajan Vaidehi (City of Hope).
In spring 2022, I obtained a permanent position as CNRS Assistant professor and joined in December 2022 the Department of Analytical and Structural Chemistry and Biology at the Institute of Chemistry of Natural Substances.
My research is transdisciplinary as it combined in silico and in vitro methods from molecular modelling, machine learning, sequence analysis, protein engineering, functional assay or cell surface expression evaluation. They are all used to understand the complexity of odor perception at the molecular level.
I hope to help elucidate our body’s strategy for perceiving its volatile environment. This includes establishing the link between the chemical structure of an odorant molecule, the biological processes involved, and the sensation it causes. I am also particularly interested in investigating the molecular role of evolutionarily conserved amino acid patterns in odorant receptors and how that defines their identity and structure within the GPCR family.
Ghosh, Soumadwip#, de March, Claire A.# et al. “Sequence coevolution and structure stabilization modulate olfactory receptor expression.” Biophysical Journal 121.5 (2022): 830-840.
Ikegami, Kentaro#, de March, Claire A.# et al. “Structural instability and divergence from conserved residues underlie intracellular retention of mammalian odorant receptors.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117.6 (2020): 2957-2967.
de March, Claire A., et al. “Modulation of the combinatorial code of odorant receptor response patterns in odorant mixtures.” Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience 104 (2020): 103469.
de March, Claire A.#, Yu, Yiqun# et al. “Conserved residues control activation of mammalian G protein-coupled odorant receptors.” Journal of the American Chemical Society 137.26 (2015): 8611-8616.
de March, Claire A.#, Topin, Jérémie# et al. “Odorant receptor 7D4 activation dynamics.” Angewandte Chemie 130.17 (2018): 4644-4648.
CNRS Research Associate CRCN
(ORCID, SciProfiles)
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