After Virginie Hachet completed her studies at the ENS in Paris, she went to EMBL (Germany) to do her master's degree in the laboratory of Dr Iain Mattaj. She then undertook her PhD in this laboratory, where she became interested in studying post-mitotic nuclear envelope assembly (NE) in vitro using Xenopus. laevis cell extracts. Virginie demonstrated that the nuclear import adaptor Importin alpha functions in NE assembly in two ways: first by interacting with NLS-containing proteins in the cytosol, and second, by an unconventional means involving phosphorylation-state dependent association of Importin alpha with membranes.

For her postdoctoral experience, she joined the laboratory of Dr Pierre Gönczy in ISREC (Switzerland) where she set out to investigate the nature of spatial and temporal cues controlling mitotic entry using Caenorhabditis elegans one-cell-stage embryos. To this end, she developed an in vivo assay for the temporal analysis of mitosis onset and demonstrated that centrosomes and Aurora-A kinase promote timing of mitotic entry. In order to further decipher the mechanisms regulating this process, she conducted an RNAi-based screen using an in vivo assay developed in Pierre Gönczy's lab. From this screen, she identified a subset of candidate genes, which she expects to either modulate AIR-1 function or be other novel regulators of mitosis.