INSERM
The INSERM team is lead by Florent Sebbane, INSERM, Lille, France.
Background
The French team consists of well-established researchers in the fields of vector-borne disease in general, and plague in particular (Sebbane, Bontemps-Gallo, Marceau, Dewitte and Pierre). It also includes partner with specific skills to provide ancient antrophophilic rodent skeleton (Oueslati), to collect fleas in wildlife (Charbonnel), to study microbiome-host interactions and to perform omics work (Leulier, Hughes, Gillet) and to develop scientific instrument and software for automated analysis (Kassi and Miguet). The team leadership is based at the Center for Infection and Immunity of Lille which is located on the campus of the Institut Pasteur de Lille.
Introducing the infrastructure
Sebbane’s team includes people located at the Institut Pasteur de Lille (IPL), the “Histoire, Archéologie, literature des mondes anciens (HALMA), the Institute of Functional Genomics of Lyon (IGLF), the Center for Biology and Management of Population of Montpellier (CBGP), the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Physics of Grenoble (LIPHY), and the Laboratory of Computer Science in Image and Information Systems of Lyon (LIRIS).
ILP
IPL hosts the Center for Infection & Immunity of Lille (CIIL) hosting the Plague and Yersinia pestis team (PYP, Sebbane, Bontemps-Gallo, Marceau, Dewitte, Pierre). IPL is an international medical research center divided into 8 units (encompassing 34 research teams) and >6 platforms (e.g. Bioimaging) which aims at understanding the mechanisms of diseases with the most impact to human health thanks to multidisciplinary and transversal skills. The CIIL unit is composed of 14 teams that mostly focus on the study of infectious agents and the immune response to at develop diagnostics, vaccines and antibiotic therapies. In this campus, the PYP aims at deciphering the mechanisms responsible for the emergence, maintenance and spread of plague. To this end, the group applies a multidisciplinary approach to flea, rodent and flea-rodent-flea model infections. The team has assigned BSL1, BSL-2 and BSL3 laboratories, insectariums (BSL1 and BSL3) and animal facilities (BSL1 and BSL3). All the laboratories are equipped to safely perform molecular biology, bacteriology and histology analysis, and animal (rodent and flea) infections. It has also all the authorizations to work with Y. pestis and animals.