Our team study how phenotypic and genetic variation is generated in bacterial populations, especially in response to environmental stresses, and how they modulate evolvability and robustness of these populations. We are also elucidating molecular mechanisms driving evolution of persistence and resistance to antibiotic. Besides generating fundamental knowledge, our research may facilitate development of new therapeutic strategies to predict and combat the emergence of antibiotic resistances.
In order to face conceptual and technical challenges posed by these projects, besides genetic, genomic and molecular biology methods, we are developping novel methodologies allowing studying single live bacterial cells. For this, we developed an experimental framework based on the microfluidic technology. We are also developing novel assays allowing monitoring mutation and mistranslation error rates, as well as metabolic state of living single cells.