Scientific Mission to South Florida – Epigenetics and Environmental Stress in Mangrove Rivulus and Cassiopea Jellyfish – July-August 2025 From July 16 to August 6, 2025, members of the Research Unit in Environmental and Evolutionary Biology (URBE) undertook a field expedition to South Florida, focusing on the study of two mangrove model species: the self-fertilizing mangrove rivulus…
Category: epigenetics
The first epigenetic clock on the mangrove rivulus is in preprint !
Justine Bélik has published as a preprint the first epigenetic clock in the mangrove rivulus, and the first ever on a self-fertilizing species. She has been working on brain tissue samples from 96 individuals from Emerson Point Preserve, Florida, up to 1000 days of age. With this clock, we’re able to predict the chronological age…
New PhD position to work on the Beluga whale
We are pleased to announce two fully funded PhD positions within our new research project on the St. Lawrence River Beluga whale population in Quebec. Read the official announcement of the project by FNRS here. More informations on the project news can be found here. One PhD position will be based in Montreal, in the…
Frédéric’s mission to Otago University
Frédéric Silvestre recently spent two weeks at the University of Otago in Dunedin, located in the southeastern region of New Zealand. This visit provided an excellent opportunity to strengthen the longstanding collaboration, initiated in 2014, with Dr. Aniruddha Chatterjee, a renowned expert in cancer epigenetics and professor in the Department of Pathology. During his stay,…
Frédéric Silvestre is in New Zealand !
From November 22nd till December 6th, Frédéric Silvestre will visit the University of Otago in the South-East city of Dunedin, New Zealand. It’s the first visit of Frédéric at Otago even if he’s been collaborating with Dr Aniruddha Chatterjee since 2014. This long-term friendship has recently resulted in the first framework collaboration agreement between the…
3rd Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology
The 3rd Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology was held in Montreal in July 2024. It is a huge scientific conference (17 sessions in parallel), regrouping European and North American Evolutionary Biology Societies every 4 years. Justine Bélik and Frédéric Silvestre presented their researches on the mangrove rivulus during the special symposium on Adaptive Epigenetics. For…
New research project in Ecuator
We are proud and happy to start a new collaboration with the Universidad Central del Ecuador, thanks to ARES-CCD starting grants: https://us15.campaign-archive.com/?e=__test_email__&u=c95463d02ed96d28ee34e579d&id=398cacc780 Our project aims to develop a populational epigenomic approach with a goal of conservation biology in this high biodiversity spot. More field missions in perspective ! Download QR
LEAP was at Banyuls for the ECOBIM 2024 conference
After having organized the ECOBIM conference in Namur in 2022, the LEAP was present in Banyuls-sur-mer (La Sorbonne University) for the 2024 edition: https://ecobim.sciencesconf.org/. Julie Hetru presented a poster and a flash talk about her PhD project on turquoise killifish epigenetic clock and ecotoxicology, while Frederic Silvestre attended the meeting as a representative of the…
New FNRS project at LEAP
We are pleased to announce that the research project entitled “Epigenome stability in mangrove rivulus” has been funded by FNRS. It aims to assess the stability of DNA methylation over time in a highly homozygous and isogenic population of the mangrove rivulus, Kryptolebias marmoratus. It will address two major limitations of ecoepigenetic studies. Firstly, it…
Julie Hétru, our new PhD student
Since the beginning of October, we’ve been pleased to welcome Julie Hétru, MSc, in our lab to start a PhD on the Turquoise killifish. She is granted by the FSR funds from UNamur and from UCLouvain, in collaboration with our colleagues Prof. Cathy Debier and Melissa Page. Julie is working on the epigenetic changes during…