Young Researchers Meeting 2021

The Young Researcher Meeting of GDR RNA was held online on June 2, 2021 with two sessions from 10 am to 12 pm and from 2 pm to 4 pm : Program YRM2021 GDR RNA and more than 80 participants!!

PhD students and post-docs had the possibility to give an oral presentation of 10 minutes and two awards have been attributed to the best oral presentations:

Lauriane is a second year PhD student in Michel Arthur’s lab at Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers (CRC, Paris) under the supervision of Dr. Matthieu Fonvielle and Pr. Mélanie Etheve-Quelquejeu. She gratuated from Sorbonne University and Pasteur Institute where she obtained a Master degree in microbiology.

The team aims to understand antibiotic resistance mechanisms and to identify new potential targets for drug development. In this context, her PhD project is focused on tRNA-dependent aminoacyl Fem transferases of Staphylococcus aureus. In S. aureus, those enzymes are implicated in the synthesis of the pentaglycine lateral side chain of peptidoglycan precursors. This side chain is essential for the last step of cell wall synthesis, leading Fem transferases to be targets for drug development. Her work aims to characterize molecular determinants allowing the recognition of tRNAs by Fem transferases thanks to approaches combining biochemistry and biology.

Ali came from Lebanon with a bachelor in Biology to continue his studies with another bachelor in Biochemistry in 2015 at the University of Toulouse Paul Sabatier. He first became interested in the domain of RNA when I had my first internship for my master’s degree, in the University of Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier, at the laboratory of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology of CBI of Toulouse. During this internship he focused on studying the role of a budding yeast RNA helicase called Dbp6 in the production of the large ribosomal subunit and more precisely how this enzyme participates in the structuring of the ribosomal RNA during this synthesis. He was then able to obtain a ministerial scholarship to pursue a PhD on the same project (at the same laboratory) under the supervision of Dr. Odile HUMBERT in the team of Eukaryotic Ribosome Biogenesis directed by Dr. Yves HENRY and Dr. Anthony HENRAS, leaders in the domain of ribosome biogenesis. He is currently finishing his PhD on the understanding of the essential structuring of RNA within ribosomes and he hopes to get the chance to continue working in the magnificent world of RNA through future Post-doctoral position.