7th USIAS Seminar - A novel infection paradigm

Dominique Ferrandon, USIAS Fellow 2012

While we understand the main principles of the immune responses that allow it to fight against bacterial, fungal or viral infections, our understanding of its defences against intracellular eukaryotic parasites is lacking.

Parasitic diseases afflict much of mankind and our current knowledge is still too fragmentary to fight them efficiently. At a more fundamental level, parasitism is inherent to life and represents one of the major forces that have shaped evolution.

Dr. Ferrandon's team studies a natural parasite of the model organism Drosophila, which has evolved with major adaptations to its intracellular parasitic lifestyle and has lost many metabolic pathways. For instance, it lacks the powerhouses of eukaryotic cells and steals its energy directly from its host

The project consists of a detailed study of parasitism at different levels of organization, shuttling back and forth between the cellular and the organismal levels. A major aim will be to implement a genome-wide screen in cultured cells to identify the host genes required imperatively for the proliferation of the parasite.

Using the all the power of the well-established Drosophila genetics will help to understand how the host copes with its selfish guest at the metabolic and energy levels, a situation reminiscent of cancer-afflicted organisms.