Christophe Penno
Biography
Christophe has an MSc in Microbiology-Virology, and a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University Pierre et Marie Curie (France). During his PhD, he investigated the genetic regulation of the type III secretion system in Shigella flexneri, the causative agent of the dysentery in humans (Dr Claude Parsot, Molecular Microbial Pathogenesis, Pasteur Institute). He discovered the first example of a virulence factor being expressed by non-standard gene expression involving mRNA reprogramming by the RNA polymerase of S. flexneri. With the development of the Next Generation Sequencing leading to a boom of the genomic sequences available, Christophe moved to Ireland to join the laboratory of Pr. John Atkins to assess the productive utilization of the phenomenon in a broad diversity of organisms (from bacteria to multicellular eukaryotic organisms), and variety of polymerase enzymes, including HIV Reverse transcriptase. To investigate the biological impact of reprogramming by polymerase within the context of the holobiont, Christophe, then joined the lab of Pr. Douwe van Sinderen to investigate the phenomenon in Bifidobacterium.
Christophe has secured several national and international grants, including an SFI Industry fellowship to gain experience in a biotech company, and a Marie Curie MSCA fellowship (project RhizoMir) to investigate a new type of interkingdom communication within the holobiont, using the plant root as a model (Dr El Amrani, ECOBIO University Rennes, France). He is a scientific advisor for several international research projects and a member of GO-EV network (Western France Extracellular Vesicle Network). He recently joined APC as a Research Support Officer to provide broad technical and research support in Molecular Biology across all APC labs.