Past projects

AMALGAM – Automating microbial genome assemblies

Endless improvements of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) lead to constantly increasing sequencing data that serve various studies such as metagenomics, transcriptomics or WGS projects. De novo assembly of raw data from WGS projects has been a tedious task requiring a strong expertise for a while but the recent development of powerful tools has brought the technical part of this process within the reach of “standard” bioinformaticians. However, the choice of the appropriate tool depends on the nature of the data (huge amount of short high quality reads vs few long and noisy reads) and probably the issue to address (assembling an isolate vs a collection of genomes included in a complex sample).

PathoTRACK – Detecting and identifying microbial pathogens in complex samples

PathoTRACK – Detecting and identifying microbial pathogens in complex samples

In addition to being time consuming and irrelevant for detection of a wide panel of pathogenic targets, current diagnostic methods for pathogens detection (microbial cultures, PCR-RFLP, test strips…) are almost useless in case of complex biological threats (e.g. several pathogens in a mixed sample). Thus, High-throughput sequencing (HTS) becomes undoubtedly a relevant tool for biodefense activities because besides being now affordable, it allows rapid identification of microorganisms without a priori, without isolation or prior cultivation, and can be even applied to microorganisms embedded in extremely complex matrices (i.e. metagenomic samples; e.g. soil samples, clinical samples, contaminated food…).