Section: Application Domains

Agronomy and Environment

Improving plant breeding: such projects aim at 1) identifying favorable alleles at loci contributing to phenotypic variation, 2) characterizing N-traits at the functional level and 3) providing robust multi-locus SNP-based predictors of the breeding value of agronomical traits under polygenic control. Underlying bioinformatics processing is the detection of informative zones (QTL) on the plant genomes.

Insect study: Insects represent major crop pests, justifying the need for control strategies to limit population outbreaks and the dissemination of plant viruses they frequently transmit. Several issues are investigated through the analysis and comparison of their genomes: understanding their phenotypic plasticity such as their reproduction mode changes, identifying the genomic sources of adaptation to their host plant and of ecological speciation, and understanding the relationships with their bacterial symbiotic communities.

Ocean biodiversity: The metagenomic analysis of seawater samples provides an original way to study the ecosystems of the oceans. Through the biodiversity analysis of different ocean spots, many biological questions can be addressed, such as the plankton biodiversity and their role, for example, in the CO2 sequestration.