Dr. Antonin Thiebaut

After a bachelor’s degree in biology from the Université Paris Diderot (France), I obtained a master’s degree in Genetics from the Université Paris Diderot (France). On top of the master’s degree, I also obtained a diploma from the Magistère Européen de Génétique and two diplomas from the Institut Pasteur. I then pursued a PhD under Frédéric DEVAUX’ supervision at Sorbonne Université, where I worked with the yeast Candida glabrata, a human pathogen. More specifically, I was using high-throughput techniques such as ChIP-seq, micro-arrays and RNA-seq to reconstruct the transcriptional networks involved in C. glabrata stress responses.

Also, comparing my results with transcriptional networks in other yeasts led me to take a huge interest in genes/pathways/genomes evolution and conservation. This was a starting point for me and I joined Robert Waterhouse’s lab to keep tackling such evolutionary questions, although the organisms I’m now working on are really different (and way bzzzz-ier) : drosophila and mosquitoes ! And in these species, I’ll mainly focus on the immune genes that produce anti-microbial peptides, which are a key mechanism in host defense against a pathogen.