Members
Head of Unit
Philippe Bastin DR2 INSERM
curriculum vitae
Permanent staff
Thierry Blisnick, Pasteur Ingénieur
Thierry has been at the Pasteur Institute since 1983 where he worked on Plasmodium falciparum and published more than 20 papers on that topic. After an experience on Yersinia, he joined our lab in January 2006 where he runs numerous projects related to flagellum formation. Also known as Shiva, Thierry uses biochemistry, immunology, molecular and cellular biology on a day-to-day basis. He recently specialised in scanning electron microscopy working at the EM platform of the Institute on virtually all the lab subjects. Trypanosomes, Plasmodium, ciliates, mammalian cilia, mouse kidney, fly tissues... nothing can hide from his hawk eyes! His recent projects are the analysis of the IFT dynein motors where he characterised four different subunits and their interactions with the IFT complexes.
Anne Cozanet, Institut Pasteur Secretary
Anne has been working at Institut Pasteur since May 2000. For eight years, she worked for the Institute's executive board, within the Scientific Assessment Department. In October 2008, she joined our lab as well as Artur Scherf's (Biology of Host Parasite Interactions). She is running multiple tasks for the lab, especially looking after all newcomers (students, post-docs) and dealing with paperwork. She is also in charge of budget preparation both on the Institut Pasteur side and the CNRS side for the URA2581, to which both labs belong. Having worked abroad for ten years before joining Institut Pasteur, Anne is fluent in English, which helps a lot since a majority of the personnel in both labs is of foreign origin.
Brice Rotureau, Institut Pasteur staff scientist (chargé de recherche)
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.
Sylvie Perrot, Institut Pasteur Technician
Sylvie has been working at the Institut Pasteur since 1983. In the beginning she used to work on entomopathogen fungi and acquired experience in breeding different insects such as silkworm, Galleria mellonella, drosophilae and mosquitoes. She then went on to work on Plasmodium, first in the vector and then in human beings. During that period, she learned transmission and scanning electron microscopy. She joined the unit in 2011 where she is now developing the breeding of Glossina morsitans and also trying to unveil the most hidden secrets of Trypanosoma using transmission electron microscopy.
Post-doctoral fellows & students
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 1st, 2012. The purpose of her thesis is to understand how the IFT particle moves along flagellar microtubules.
Diego Huet, PhD student
Diego joined the lab in 2008 for an intership and then stayed to start his PhD in September 2009. He obtained his Master of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) in 2009.
Very little is known about the regulation of intraflagellar transport (IFT) and Diego is studying the role of small GTPases as potential IFT regulators during flagellar assembly in trypanosomes using several approaches including cell biology, biochemistry and live cell imaging.
Very little is known about the regulation of intraflagellar transport (IFT) and Diego is studying the role of small GTPases as potential IFT regulators during flagellar assembly in trypanosomes using several approaches including cell biology, biochemistry and live cell imaging.
Benjamin Morga, post-doctoral fellow
Benjamin did his PhD work investigating host-parasite interactions between the flat oyster Ostrea edulis and the haplosporidian parasite Bonamia ostreae at the Laboratory of Genetic and Pathology at IFREMER, the French institute for research and exploitation of the sea, in La Tremblade (close to La Rochelle). His thesis won a special award from IFREMER in 2011. He joined the lab as a post-doc in September 2012 for two years, funded by the Pasteur-Roux Fellowship Program. Benjamin is now working on the intraflagellar transport in Trypanosoma brucei brucei. He is trying to decipher the role of the molecular motors driving transport.
Cher Pheng Ooi, post-doctoral fellow
Cher Pheng studied the phenomenon where trypanosomes exploit tsetse-secreted serine protease inhibitors to better establish infections within the fly midgut for his PhD at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Continuing on the theme of parasite-vector interactions, he was recruited for the lab under an Il-de-France Fellowship, and is currently tackling investigations pertaining to trypanosome infections within the tsetse. His current pet project is on a novel flagellar-specific enzyme which is important for trypanosomes to complete its infection cycle within the tsetse.
Julien Santi-Rocca, Post-doctoral fellow
During his PhD at the Institut Pasteur (Dr. Nancy Guillén’s lab), Julien studied the molecular biology of Entamoeba histolytica, the agent of amoebiasis. He developed RNAi methods to knockdown gene expression in this protozoan parasite as well as a diagnosis tool for the detection of intestinal amoebiasis. His thesis won a special award from the Société Française de Parasitologie. After defending his PhD in 2008, Julien chose to go on with the study of host-parasite interactions, focusing on the immunology of Chagas disease. He joined Pr. Fresno’s lab at the CBMSO (Madrid, Spain) for a first post-doc, where he used Trypanosoma cruzi as a model to investigate about the bittersweet dialogue between the parasite and the host. The modulation of the immune system impacting both parasite and host survival was studied both in vivo and in vitro. Julien joined the lab in September 2012 thanks to an FRM post-doctoral fellowship. He is studying the mechanisms controlling variations of flagellum length during the life cycle of Trypanosoma brucei.
Sylvain Trépout
After his PhD in Bordeaux on the structure of membrane proteins using cryo-electron tomography, Sylvain did his first post-doc in Frankfurt, Germany where he continued working with electron microscopes on whole bacteria cells. With his strong background in electron microscopy, he is now a post-doc member of the U759 Inserm unit at the Institut Curie in Orsay where he is working on the structure and ultrastructure of Trypanosoma brucei brucei axoneme components in collaboration with Philippe Bastin and his group.