Members

After his PhD work on the eco-epidemiology of leishmaniases at the Faculty of Medicine of Cayenne (French Guiana), Brice spent one year as an epidemiologist at the Tropical and International Department of the French Institute for Public Health Surveillance (InVS, Saint-Maurice, France). He joined the lab as a post-doc in May 2007, to study the development and behaviour of trypanosomes during the infection of the tsetse flies. He has initiated an interaction with the CIRAD-IRD group of Gérard Cuny (Montpellier, France) who has provided the tsetse flies that were maintained and infected with T. brucei in our lab. Recently, in partnership with the CIRDES (Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso), he set up a new insectarium to maintain two tsetse colonies, in interaction with Sylvie Perrot. Brice has investigated the cell biology of trypanosomes during their multiple developmental stages in the insect, especially in the salivary glands. He recently developed the use of  fluorescent parasites to monitor more precisely the role of several flagellar components in cell plasticity and motility. In July 2011, Brice obtained a permanent position as an Assistant Professor at the Institut Pasteur. In addition to the study of the roles of the trypanosome flagellum in sensing in the tseste fly, he is currently studying the development of trypanosomes during the early steps of the infection in the mammalian host by several dynamic imaging approaches in vivo.

Cécile Fort, PhD student

Cecile is passionate about research and imaging techniques including both photonics and electronics. She obtained a master's degree at the University of Rouen, specializing in "Imaging for biology". Her internship was carried out in Beatrice Satiat-Jeunemaitre's lab (ISV - Gif sur Yvette) where she studied the endomembrane compartment, including the Golgi apparatus in BY2 tobacco cells. Subsequently, Cécile joined Graça Raposo's lab at Institut Curie and got interested in the formation of amyloid fibres during in vivo melanogenesis.  Cecile obtained a PhD fellowship from the graduate school IVIV (ED 387) and joined Philippe's lab on October 1^st, 2012. The purpose of her thesis is to understand how the IFT particle moves along flagellar microtubules.

Laetitia Vincensini, post-doctoral fellow (2007-2012)

Laetitia completed her PhD in 2005 at the Pasteur Institute, working on Plasmodium falciparum. After a postdoc on pathogenic E. coli at Imperial College London, she came back to parasites and to Paris, using the trypanosome and its flagellum as a model to study primary ciliary dyskinesia, a genetic disease affecting cilia and flagella. In collaboration with Unité Inserm 933 (Hôpital Trousseau, directed by Serge Amselem) her work highlighted the importance of cytoplasmic preassembly of flagellar components. During her time in the lab, she investigated the mechanisms of flagellar growth, wondering whether a flagellum is built like a Lego tower, with new material being added at the distal tip.  Laetitia has obtained a lecturer position at the University Pierre and Marie Curie where she will start in September.

Ines Subota, PhD student (2007-2011)

After a short-term project on protein trafficking in the lab of Markus Engstler and Michael Boshart (then at LMU University in Munich), Ines did her diploma thesis in structural biology within the group of Wolfgang Baumeister at the Max Planck Institute (Munich). She joined the lab in July 2007 to perform a PhD on applications and functions of RNAi in trypanosomes. She identified a couple of RNA-binding proteins known as ALBA3 and ALBA4 and demonstrated their essential role in parasite development in the tsetse fly. Towards the end of her thesis, she could not resist the flagellum appeal and characterised multiple proteins identified during Daria's proteome. She also set up the LabCollector data base in the lab. Ines is of Romanian and German nationality and was funded by a “Bourse Formation Recherche” from the G.L. Luxembourg and later on by the CNRS. She was awarded her Ph.D. on 12th October 2011 and is now working as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Wurzburg. 

Johanna Buisson, PhD student (2007-2011)

Johanna first joined the lab in 2003 when we were still at the Muséum for a short-term project during her “magistère” in biochemistry (Paris VI). She studied the role of motility in bloodstream trypanosomes and obtained compelling data showing the importance of movemet for cell division. She then went to Lyon at the Institut technique de réadaptation (University Claude Bernard) to obtain a Diplôme d’Audioprothésiste (2003-2006) before coming back to research in 2006 for a master in cellular and molecular biology. She started her PhD in September 2007 and set up new approaches to quantify intraflagellar transport in trypanosomes, in collaboration with the Imagopole Platform and with the group of J.C. Olivo-Marin. She used tricky live imaging approaches to reveal the dynamics of IFT proteins at both flagellum bases and tips, as well as during trafficking along axoneme microtubules. Because of her expertise in morphogenesis and the inner ear, she also investigated the dynamics of the basal body of the kinocilium during mouse development, in collaboration with the group of C. Petit. Johanna was affiliated to the IViV doctoral school and funded by fellowships from the French Ministry of Research, from the FRM and from the Pasteur-Weizmann foundation. She was awarded her PhD on 9th September 2011 and is now working as audioprothesist.

Daria Julkowska, post-doctoral fellow (2006-2010)

After a thesis on bacterial swarming (Bacillus subtilis) with Simone Seror at Orsay University, Daria joined our lab in January 2006 to develop a new project to identify proteins present in the membrane and matrix fraction of the trypanosome flagellum. This fraction is critical as it contains all the proteins necessary for flagellum formation and maintenance, but also candidate sensing proteins. Daria managed to purify intact flagella and analyzed their content in collaboration with the Proteomics Platform of the Institute. She also analyzed the function of the identified proteins. Daria is of Polish nationality and was initially funded by a grant from ANR on rare genetic diseases before obtaining a Roux fellowship for two years and support from the ANR grant SENSOTRYPA. She left the lab late 2010 to work as Executive Programme Manager of the E-Rare project at the GIS Institut Des Maladies Rares in Paris.

Christine Adhiambo, post-doctoral fellow (2005-2007)

Christine is from Kenya and got her Ph.D. in Jon LeBowitz lab in Purdue where she was the first one to demonstrate the role of an IFT motor (dynein) in Leishmania mexicana. She also revealed the existence of two separate IFT dynein heavy chains in Trypanosomatids, a project that has been further developed by Thierry in trypanosomes. In our lab, she demonstrated the role of the small G protein RAB-like 5 in flagellum formation. Intriguingly, this protein seems to belong to the IFT-B (termed IFT22) complex in Chlamydomonas but its knock-down results in a phenotype typical of the IFT-A inhibition, suggesting that RABL5 may control the exchange between the two complexes, possibly at the distal tip of the elongating flagellum. Christine is now a lecturer at Moï University (Kenya).

Carole Branche, PhD student (2004-2007)

Carole started her PhD at the Karolinska Institutet under the supervision of Björn Anderson where she contributed to decipher the complex genetics of Trypanosoma cruzi. She joined the lab to perform functional analysis of genes involved in motility, demonstrating the usefulness of trypanosomes as models to study primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD).

Géraldine Toutirais, AI INSERM (2003-2005)

Géraldine was our expert in transmission and scanning electron microscopy when the team was based at the Muséum. Her work led to the identification of the restricted positioning of the IFT particles next to specific axoneme microtubule doublets. She also characterised the morphology of several flagellar mutants. She is now in charge of the Microscopy Platform of the IFR83 on the Jussieu campus.

Arounie Tavenet, MSc student (2005)

Arounie characterised the function of several IFT genes in the summer of 2005, under the guidance of Sabrina. She contributed to the move to the Institut Pasteur and went on to do a PhD in Saclay on transcription in yeast.

Sabrina Absalon, MSc & PhD student (2003-2008)

Sabrina studied the mechanisms of intraflagellar transport and demonstrated the involvement of a dozen of genes in this process. She was the first one to visualise IFT in live trypanosomes by monitoring the trafficking of a fluorescent IFT protein. She investigated the mechanisms of expression of flagellar proteins in normal and mutant conditions where flagella could not be assembled. Together with Linda Kohl, she showed the importance of the flagellum for basal body migration. She also paid attention to various consequences of dsRNA expression on trypanosome behaviour. She contributed to setting up the lab at the Pasteur Institute. Sabrina moved to Harvard (Boston, USA) in the group of Anna Krichesvky to investigate the role of miRNA in Alzheimer disease and recently went back to parasitology studing egress in Plasmodium in the laboratory of Jeff Dvorin, still at Harvard.

Linda Kohl, post-doctoral fellow (2001-2003)

Linda is from Luxembourg and was member of the lab when we were still at the Muséum. She was the first one to demonstrate the role of IFT in flagellum formation in trypanosomes and the correlation with cell morphogenesis (EMBO J. cover caption article and comments in Science and Nature). Together with Sabrina Absalon, she also showed the importance of the flagellum in basal body migration (PLoS One paper). She contributed to setting up the lab at the Muséum and produced the first axoneme mutants upon RNAi silencing of PF16 and LC2. She is now lecturer at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle and works on flagellar biogenesis in trypanosomes in the USM504 Biologie fonctionnelle des protistes directed by Philippe Grellier. She still collaborates with the lab and is a partner of our recent ANR-MIE grant SENSOTRYPA. Her group has demonstrated the amazing importance of kinesin 9B (KIF9B) for assembly of the paraflagellar rod.

Mickaël Durand-Dubief, MSc & PhD student (2001-2005)

Mickaël investigated RNAi applications and mechanisms in trypanosomes. He worked out the conditions for efficient and specific RNAi, parameters that were used to develop the RNAit algorithm (link) by the group of Mark Field. He then produced a knock-out of the only bona fide Argonaute gene in the T. brucei genome and demonstrated the central role of AGO1 in RNAi. He went on to show that RNAi activity was important to control the level of transcripts derived from certain families of pseudogenes. Mickaël now studies epigenetics in yeast and is a post-doctoral fellow at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, after having done his first post-doc at the Karolinska Institute (Stockholm, Sweden) in the lab of Karl Ekwall.