François Blanquart. françois Blanquart
François Blanquart has been a CNRS research fellow since 2017. He is a member of the "Stochastic Models for the Inference of Life Evolution" team at CIRB, the Collège de France's interdisciplinary biology research center, as well as the "Quantitative Evolutionary Microbiology" team in the Infection, Antimicrobials, Modeling, Evolution unit at UMR Medicine, Bichat Hospital.
Three questions for François Blanquart
Can you tell us a little about your scientific career?
I'm trying to understand how populations adapt to changing environments. During my thesis (CNRS, Sylvain Gandon) and a first post-doctorate (University of Aarhus, Thomas Bataillon), I developed theoretical work to understand these dynamics. During a second postdoc (Imperial College London, Christophe Fraser), I decided to focus on human pathogens. Pathogens have to adapt to changing conditions within the host (immune system, treatments) and also to a diversity of hosts. In particular, I work on the evolution of HIV and antibiotic resistance in bacteria, analyzing genomic and epidemiological data in the light of mathematical models. I've been pursuing this work since I was recruited by the CNRS.
What does the award of a Starting Grant from the European Research Council mean to you? Can you tell us about the research project that has been selected?
It's recognition for the scientific project I've been developing with my colleagues over the last few years. This funding will enable me to collect data to better understand the short-term evolution of the commensal bacterium Escherichia coli. This bacterium, which lives in the intestine, is mostly harmless, but sometimes causes infections (urinary tract infections, bacteremia). The aim of the project is to understand the many evolutionary changes that have taken place in this species since the 1980s, in particular the increase in several antibiotic resistances.
What are the main research issues in your field, and the main challenges facing the discipline(s) concerned?
Very subjectively, one important question is to understand how the environment determines selective value (or fitness). In the context of my project, for example, what makes a bacterium a "good" commensal bacterium, i.e. one that leaves many offspring? This is no easy task, as the environment inhabited by these bacteria is complex (varied hosts, changing conditions, etc.). A second important question: how can we detect population adaptation from genomes? Can we identify selected mutations? This task is made more difficult by the fact that genomes contain a large number of interlinked mutations.
