Projects
Understanding the pathogen phenotypic variations to decipher & control the infection process and the treatment failures
Project 1: Within-host Persister biology
Research on persisters has gained heightened attention in an effort to tackle antibiotic tolerance and relapsing infections. The antibiotic persisters were detected first in the mid-1940s. Yet, it took nearly 80 years to fill the technological gap to decipher the persister’s biology during an infection. In that regard, our early contribution has been decisive. We use as model organism Legionella pneumophila, a facultative intracellular bacterium and causative agent for the life-threatening pneumonia called Legionnaires’ disease.
Project 2: Multi-cellularity in pathogenic bacteria
During infection, clonal expansion of the pathogen results in a genetically identical bacterial population within micrometer-scale environments. Specialization among these bacteria arises primarily through phenotypic heterogeneity— the transient expression of alternative phenotypes that enhances the collective performance of the isogenic population. This project aims to understand how biological heterogeneity underpins phenotypic variation in pathogens and how the spatial and temporal distribution of these phenotypes contributes to the community’s functional performance during infection and under antimicrobial treatment.
To reach its goeals, our team combines methods in microbiology, cell biology, molecular biology, bioanalytical methods and mathematical modeling & evolutionary ecology to innovative infections assays and cutting-edge high-throughput single-cell technologies, multi-parametric and quantitative high-resolution microscopy, omics analysis and genome-wide loss of function approaches.