Microbial technologies
The research conducted within the axis aims at the implementation of microorganisms for specific applications (industrial production, behavior in a particular ecosystem, pathogenicity,...). At the fundamental level, the research is carried out following a multi-scale approach implementing genomics/proteomics/metabolomics (molecular scale), the study of microbial populations (micro-scale) and their behavior in bioreactors or in a particular ecosystem (macro-scale).
Some specific topics are listed below:
- Metabolic engineering of microorganisms to improve the production of secondary metabolites / recombinant proteins / plasmid DNA)
- Engineering of bioreactors (scale-up, scale-down, scale-out, induction of specific stresses,...)
- Study of the fundamental mechanisms governing the normal and pathological functioning of the cell
- Study of the mechanisms governing the heterogeneity of microbial populations
- Study of the interactions of microorganisms with systems of agronomic interest (plant, soil,...).
- Functional metagenomics and metatranscriptomics applied to microbial populations of different ecosystems (forest or agricultural soil samples, insect digestive juices, marine algae microflora, etc.) in order to find new enzymes with new functional properties better adapted to agro-industrial applications.
Our laboratories:
🔬 Microbial processes and interactions (MiPI)
At the MiPI lab, we are focused on the analysis of the dynamics of microbial populations exhibiting phenotypic diversification and mutational adaptations in relevant ecosystems and in bioprocesses. In order to address these challenges, the MiPI lab has developed innovative single cell tools (e.g., on-line flow cytometry, microfluidics cultivation devices, genetically-encoded fluorescent biosensors) allowing to capture relevant single cell features (growth, viability, gene expression) among growing microbial populations. At the fundamental level, several research lines are investigated:
• Understanding the impact of phenotypic diversification on microbial population behaviour and its potential impact of population fitness and functionality
• Defining an experimental and numerical framework in order to be able to predict mono- and co-culture stability in continuous culture.
• Understand why periodic/regular environmental changes (pulsing) can help stabilizing microbial population and its (phenotypic) heterogeneity -> harmonic perturbations
🔬 Molecular biology
