I am a postdoc in Ryo Morimoto lab. My research focus is on invertebrate immunity and on hemocytes, leveraging recent technologies (scRNAseq) to uncover their diversity.
I obtained my PhD at the University of Perpignan Via Domitia (France) in the IHPE Laboratory, where I characterized the diversity of hemocytes in the Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas through transcriptomic, cytological, and functional analyses. I also investigated how bacterial infections impact this cellular diversity.
Following my PhD, I joined Ryo Morimoto lab at Umeå University in Sweden to study hematopoiesis in Biomphalaria glabrata, a freshwater snail that serves as the intermediate host of the human parasite Schistosoma spp. Hematopoiesis, the process of producing and renewing immunocompetent cells, is crucial for maintaining effective immune defenses, yet it remains poorly understood in invertebrates. Although circulating and mature hemocytes have been described in B. glabrata, the mechanisms underlying their production remain largely unknown. To address this gap, I combine transcriptomic approaches (scRNA-seq and RNA-seq) with CRISPR-Cas9–based functional genomics to disrupt candidate transcription factors regulating hemocyte differentiation, thereby validating predicted lineage trajectories. In parallel, I investigate fibrinogen-related proteins (FREPs), a highly diverse family of immune receptors specialized in microbial recognition and involved in the clearance of Schistosoma parasites, with a particular focus on the mechanisms driving their diversification.