Marianne obtained her PhD in 2005, on the comparative study of the reproductive strategies of bacteriophages infecting the bacteria Escherichia coli. Since then she has been interested in deciphering the molecular mechanisms and evolutionary pressures that drive phage evolution, conducting researches at the interface of genetics, experimental evolution and ecology.
After post-doctorate in Nadine Cerf-Bensussan’s Lab (laboratory of intestinal mucosal immunology, Medical Faculty Rene Descartes, Paris), where she studied the evolutionary pressures bacteria face in the gut environment, she became a tenured researcher in 2012 at INRAE, in the Phage team. She conducted researches on the co-evolution of phage and bacteria in the intestinal microbiota, and brought to light the detrimental effect of prophages in the gut due to frequent reactivation.
Since 2019, in collaboration with Marina Elez, she started investigating the mechanisms explaining why phages have a mutation rate a hundred-fold higher than their bacterial host, even those that use the host machinery of replication. In addition, she is actively involved in the collective Labos1p5 (https://labos1point5.org/), that gathers researchers working to understand and reduce the environmental impact of research.
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