The 2018 Bettencourt Young Researchers Prize was awarded to post-doctoral fellow Aude Bernheim for her work on phages.

Building bridges between evolution and synthetic biology

For her PhD, Aude Bernheim combined genetic analysis and large-scale computational biology to explore the highly competitive field of CRISPR systems. CRISPR are bacterial immune defense mechanisms that biologists insert into a powerful toolbox to edit genes and their expression. She demonstrated that CRISPR is missing in about 50% of bacterial lineages due to incompatibility with certain DNA repair mechanisms.

During her post-doctorate, she will continue exploring the links between biotechnology and evolution by decoding the mechanisms that phages develop to counter the CRISPR system and infect bacteria. Understanding these mechanisms would allow the development of new synthetic biology tools.

Aude Bernheim in a few words

Thesis: "Interactions with DNA Repair Pathways Modify the Distribution of the CRISPR-Cas System", under the supervision of Drs. David Bikard and Eduardo Rocha, Pasteur Institute (Paris), Frontiers of Life Graduate School - specialization in Microbiology, Université Paris Descartes

Post-Doctorate: "Understanding How Phages Neutralize the Bacterial Immune System", under the direction of Dr. Rotem Sorek at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, Department of Molecular Genetics.

Young Researchers Bettencourt Prize

Created in 1990, the Young Researchers Bettencourt Prize is one of the first initiatives of the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller. Until 2021, this prize was awarded each year to 14 young doctors of science or doctors of medicine, to enable them to carry out their post-doctoral stay in the best foreign laboratories. 349 young researchers were distinguished. The prize endowment was €25,000.

All the award-winners