Christophe Bernard

My career path is somewhat atypical since I did a thesis in Biological Sciences following my Ph.D. in Pharmacy. I completed my pharmaceutical studies at the Claude Bernard Faculty of Pharmacy in Lyon and after obtaining my Doctor of Pharmacy, I went to the United States to do a postdoctoral internship in Microbiology on the divisome, i.e., the macromolecular system involved in the mechanism of cell division in Escherichia coli. When I came back to France, I did a thesis in Biological Sciences at the Faculty of Aix-Marseille 2 on another macromolecular system, the piliation system of type IVb Flp which is involved in the formation of biofilm in the respiratory pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. I then pursued a second postdoctoral fellowship related to the expression of genes encoding macromolecular systems involved in adhesion and biofilm formation in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
In 2011, I was recruited as assistant-professor at the University of Aix-Marseille in the team "Cellular differentiation and signaling in cyanobacteria" led by Pr. Chen-Cai Zhang and then Pr. Amel Latifi in the Laboratoire de Chimie Bactérienne. I used the team's model organism, the filamentous diazotrophic cyanobacterium Anabaena sp. PCC7120 to follow the spatio-temporal dynamics of variations in 2-OG, a metabolite related to the initiation of cell differentiation. Since 2020, I have oriented my research by integrating the team "Molecular transport through the bacterial envelope" at Laboratoire d’Ingénierie des Systèmes Macromoléculaires. I work on the Tol-Pal system, a trans-envelope complex highly conserved in Gram-negative bacteria. I study its role in the completion of prokaryotic cell division, a fundamental cellular process that requires the coordination and energization of many cell cycle mechanisms.
I participate in the teaching of Molecular Biology and Microbiology at the AMU campuses of St Charles and Luminy and in the Master of Microbiology. I am also the instigator of the Ph.D. program Plinius Cursus which I share the direction with Éric Pilet.