Blog Posts - DEROME LABORATORY

Team Highlights - Sarah El Khoury

16/4/2020

A PhD student from our team, Sarah El Khoury, won the first price of the 2019 Student Merit Award of the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists. The awards committee felt that Sarah was the most deserving candidate for her work to understand the relationships between pesticides and probiotics in bees.

More about Sarah's work:

Sarah studies the impact of clothianidin on the intestinal flora of bees. It is now well documented that functions associated with immune response and behavior are controlled by the intestinal flora in insects.

Given that clothianidin is persistent in the environment, there is an urgent need to develop alternative and sustainable strategies to mitigate its toxic effects on bee health. Her results showed that we must not underestimate low doses of pesticides introduced inside our environment.

Moreover, her results highlighted promising endogenous bacterial probiotic candidates to develop a probiotic formulation mitigating the negative impact of neonicotinoid exposure on bee colonies.

New Publication on host-microbiota responses to heavy metal contamination (Video abstract)

12/2/2020

The objective of this experimental microbial ecology and evolution study was to test the resilience of the microbiota in a host-microbiota system after exposure to a gradient of contamination with cadmium chloride.

Watch the video abstract here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ORwqQYqS3U

Read the whole paper here:

Cheaib, B., Seghouani, H., Ijaz, U.Z., Derome, N. Community recovery dynamics in yellow perch microbiome after gradual and constant metallic perturbations. Microbiome 8, 14 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-020-0789-0

MORE INFORMATION:

By combining modeling approaches for assembling ecological communities with network analyzes, we were able to quantify the contribution of the different evolutionary forces (neutral and non-neutral) to the taxonomic dynamics of the different microbial niches, as well as the interaction dynamics between the different members of microbial communities.

The novelty of this study suggests that the resilience tested on the yellow perch microbiota varies according to the type of tissue and the level of metal contamination: the skin microbiota has stabilized towards an intermediate structure, the intestinal microbiota has converged towards that of the group. control, suggesting strong resilience. The gradual contamination compared to the constant was more harmful on the composition and structure of all types of microbial communities, as well as on the bioaccumulation of Cadmium in the livers of juvenile fish.

Two Derome Lab students elected on RAQ student board

11/2/2020

Two graduate students from our lab, François-Étienne Sylvain (PhD) and Aurélie Boilard (MSc), have been recently elected as student representatives of the Ressources Aquatiques Québec strategic research network.

Congratulations to you both!

Team Highlights - Fall 2019

19/12/2019

Students from our research group have distinguished themselves on several occasions during this semester.

Laurence Auger, PhD student

Melville-Duporte Best Poster Award (QES 2019 Conference)

François-Étienne Sylvain, PhD student

Prix de la relève étoile Louis-Berlinguet (FRQNT)

Aurélie Boilard, MSc student

Alexander-Graham-Bell MSc Scholarship (NSERC)
Michael-Smith International Study Supplement (NSERC)

Congratulations to you all!

New Paper in Molecular Ecology

23/7/2019

in collaboration with A. Luis Val and colleagues (INPA, Brazil), a new article from our our research group was published in Molecular Ecology. It discusses the composition patterns of fish-associated microbiota along the unique hydrochemical gradient of the Metting of Two Waters in the Amazon river.

Amazon fish bacterial communities show structural convergence along widespread hydrochemical gradients
François-Étienne Sylvain, Aleicia Holland, Émie Audet‐Gilbert, Adalberto Luis Val and Nicolas Derome
Mol Ecol (Epub ahead of print). https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.15184

NEW PhD Research Opportunities @ Derome Lab

21/6/2019

-- THESE OFFERS ARE NOW CLOSED. Sorry! --

New Book: Microbial Communities in Aquaculture Ecosystems

14/6/2019

A new collaborative textbook, edited by Nicolas Derome, has now been published in Springer Nature:

Microbial Communities in Aquaculture Ecosystems: Improving productivity and sustainability

It overviews state-of-the-art knowledge on free-living and host-associated microbiota and their importance on both fish health and the long-term sustainability of fish farming.
It also addresses high throughput techniques to monitor those host-microbiota interactions. Applications that resulted from microbiota monitoring studies (e.g. improve water quality, prevent opportunistic infections and improving fish performance) are also discussed.

New PhD Position - Black Soldier Fly Microbiomics

8/2/2019

Goal: Developing an instant, high throughput and integrative insect larvae model to decipher the interplay of factors controlling host-microbiota interactions for biotransforming waste biomass into high value biochemicals.

Skills: Background in molecular biology and bioinformatics, excellent communication and teamwork skills. Salary: CAD $21,000 per year, for 3 years.

[ THIS OFFER IS NOW CLOSED. ]

New Publication

7/8/2018

A brief history of bioinformatics
Jeff Gauthier, Antony T. Vincent, Steve J Charette and Nicolas Derome

Briefings in Bioinformatics | https://doi.org/10.1093/bib/bby063

To access the article, click here.
(for personal use only, do not redistribute this link)

Here we present an integrative timeline of key events in bioinformatics and related fields during the past half-century, as well as some background on parallel advances in molecular biology and computer science, and some reflections on the future of bioinformatics.

Team Highlights - Sentinel North Scholarship

14/5/2018

Congratulations to Amine Chaabane, who was awarded a Sentinel North scholarship for international graduate students.

Through this program, Sentinel North seeks to attract new talent, foster the development of young international scientists able to tackle and help resolve complex northern issues, and encourage the sharing of knowledge and experience across borders.

Amine's project aims to study two populations of Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus) from the North region of Canada and trying to observe the impact of climate change and physiological parameters differences on this microbiota.
For more information about the Sentinel North international scholarship program, click here.