Presenting my PhD work at the #Microbes2025 meeting of the French Society for Microbiology (SFM) for their #AnnualPhDPrize.

Spirochetes forever!

#Science
@pasteur.fr @sfmicrobiologie.bsky.social

But we like to play: what happens if you return them the gene they lost? What happens if you give them back the SOD gene? Will they become more superoxide resistant? Surprisingly, they didn't!
See our Fig 2!

Evolution always goes first, so we figured that the ancestor of these bacteria had a SOD and that they lost it on their way to becoming pathogens... Interesting, right? Check our Fig. 1 here!
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

So we embarked on a risky adventure: we took one of these SOD-deficient pathogenic aerobes and decided not to leave the enterprise until we had an answer on how these organisms faced oxygen toxicity against all odds
Guess what? This organism was a spirochete: L. interrogans #SpirochetesAreDifferent

A study done at @pasteur.fr with the support of the Ultrastructural BioImaging Unit, the Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Hub, the Scientific Information Systems and Technical Expertise Division, and very valuable feedback from many colleagues around the world!

Spirochetes unveiled!

Shout-out to the amazing team at Institut Pasteur helping with the data analysis, and interpretation, and all the people who helped us with very valuable feedback!

spirochase.pasteur.cloud

To all the spirochete community out there, we have also made our datasets public through an easy-access resource in
👇
spirochase.pasteur.cloud

Spirochase will now enable you to answer many questions on phylogenetics within Spirochaetes!

Check it out and let us know what you think!

❗My former lab at @pasteur.fr is recruiting! I cannot recommend more to apply to this position, the environment is excellent and the project is really original and well-thought. Don't hesitate to DM me if you want further details. Please, share! All details below! 👇