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…
Category: Evolution
A new post-doc researcher at LEAP !
We are happy to welcome Dr Noëmie Guirandy as a post-doc researcher in the rivulus team. Noëmie has recently been graduated from the University of Aix-Marseille after a dissertation on the reprotoxicity of gamma irradiation on zebrafish. She will be working on long-term effects of pollutants on the mangrove rivulus and will initiate an evolutionary…
Review article in Epigenomes
Our PhD student Valentine Chapelle has published a review article in the specialized journal “Epigenomes” entitled “Population epigenetics: the extent of DNA methylation variation in wild animal populations“. In this article, Valentine brought together the up-to-date research studies investigating the DNA methylation variability in wild animal species. This is an important step into the understanding…
Ivan Blanco is our new PhD student
Congratulations to Ivan Blanco who will work in LEAP for the next four years to achieve a PhD thesis on the mangrove rivulus. Ivan just obtained a grant from the FNRS (FRIA) to work on the mating system of the self-fertilizing fish mangrove rivulus. In this species, hermaphrodites can either self-fertilize or outcross with a…
New research project on the mangrove rivulus
LEAP received a nice Saint-Nicolas present from FNRS with a grant for a research project entitled “The epigenetic origin of behavioral traits variability in a self-fertilizing fish: the mangrove rivulus”. One of the greatest challenges in evolutionary biology is to determine how epigenetic mechanisms contribute to phenotypic variability, on which selection can act. The general…
Alessandra Carion thesis
Alessandra Carion defended her PhD thesis to her jury in the private defense. She did a great job and we’re looking forward for the public defense. Book the 20th of February at 14h30 in your agenda !
The mission to Belize is a success !
In May 2019, Frédéric Silvestre and Valentine Chapelle organized a field trip to Belize to work on mangrove rivulus. This mission was dedicated to investigate two populations of mangrove rivulus: on Twin Caye and on Long Caye. The one from Twin Caye (in South Water Marine Reserve) is exceptional. It shows the higher rate of…
Environmental epigenetics workshop at Örebro, Sweden
Our laboratory massively participated to the first Environmental Epigenetics workshop that was organized at the University of Örebro in Sweden, the 21st and 22nd of February 2019. It was the opportunity for F Silvestre, A Carion, V Chapelle and A Wittorski to meet other researchers deeply involved in the environmental and evolutionary questions linked to…
Histone acetylation in the mangrove Rivulus
Third article in a row for our former post-doc Alexandre Fellous who has just published in the journal “Gene” his third article about epigenetics in our fish model, the mangrove Rivulus. He described the 27 enzymes involved in histone acetylation (KAT) and 17 in deacetylation (HDAC) as well as their dynamics during embryogenesis. This study aimed…
Valentine is our new PhD student
We’re proud to welcome Valentine Chapelle in our lab for the next 4 years. After a great MSc thesis on the mangrove rivulus heritability of personalities, Valentine successfully got a FRIA grant from FNRS. She will continue her work started during her master thesis and will evaluate the origin of epigenetic variability in natural populations…