Séminaire IPBS
Département Tuberculose & Biologie des Infections
Mardi 5 septembre 11 h
Salle des séminaires
CNRS Campus, 205 route de Narbonne – TOULOUSE
Frédéric J. Veyrier
Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université du Québec, Laval, Canada
Evolution of bacterial symbionts:
from genomics to proteins function
In this talk I will discuss recent results from our group showing that the ancestor of N.
meningitidis had undergone a rod-to-coccus cell-shape transition that came with modifications
of the peptidoglycan and its immunological properties. We also described some of the genetics
events responsible for these modifications and discovered new cell-shape determinant. A
second example is the description of the gene acquisition and the subsequent evolution that
produced one of the components of M. tuberculosis cell-envelop: the phenolic glycolipids.
We are now scaling up by reconstructing all the steps that allowed the genesis of the mycoenvelop with the expectation to shed light on its unique symbiotic properties.
All together, our unique evolutionary approach is not only shedding light on novel function
of often-unknown proteins but it is also allowing the description of key steps toward symbiosis
and their consequences.
References
 Veyrier FJ et al. 2015 Common cell shape evolution of two nasopharyngeal pathogens.
PLOS Genet 11(7):e1005338
 Wang J, …, Veyrier FJ* & Behr MA*. 2015 Insights on the emergence of Mycobacterium
tuberculosis from the analysis of Mycobacterium kansasii. Genome Biol Evol 7(3):856-70
 Veyrier FJ et al. 2013 De-O-acetylation of peptidoglycan regulates glycan chain extension
and affects in vivo survival of Neisseria meningitides. Mol Microbiol 87(5):1100-12
 Veyrier FJ et al. 2011 Trends Microbiol 19:156-61
 Veyrier FJ et al. 2011 A novel metal transporter mediating manganese export (MntX)
regulates the Mn to Fe intracellular ratio and Neisseria meningitidis virulence. PLOS Pathog
7(9):e1002261
Contact : [email protected]
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