In collaboration with Institut Pasteur, QBI presents a seminar with Ivo Boneca, INSERM Research Director and Head of the Biology & Genetics of the Bacterial Cell Wall Unit at Institut Pasteur in Paris.    

Dr. Boneca obtained is PhD from the Institut of Technical Chemistry and Biology (ITQB) from the New University of Lisbon (UNL), Portugal. From 2000 to 2004, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Institut Pasteur. In 2004, he became an INSERM investigator at the Institut Pasteur. In 2008, he was awarded a junior group and then 2013 a unit at the Department of Microbiology, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. In 2010, he defended his HDR at the Université Paris Descartes. In 2015, he became INSERM Research Director. He was deputy Director of Department in 2017-2019. Since January 2022, he also directs the INSERM Unit U1306 Host-microbe interaction and pathophysiology.

Talk Title: The Role of Peptidoglycan In Host-microbe Interactions: From DISEASE to HEALTH and BACK

In recent years, there has been a strong focus in studying the link between host physiology and its diverse microflora. Interestingly, the microflora brings two orders of magnitude more of functions to the super-organism host-microbes than the host. Thus, it is of extreme importance to understand what those functions provide to the super-organism. Although many microbiome studies have generated correlations between microbial diversity and host physiology, we are still at the infancy of detailed mechanistic studies on the molecular dialog between microbes and their host. We are beginning to understand how microbes modify dietary nutrients to support and shape host physiology through, for example, production of vitamins and essential amino acids or degradation of polysaccharides and generation of short chain fatty acids. In parallel, microbes produce what is termed as microbial-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs) such as lipopolysaccharide (LPS), peptidoglycan (PGN), lipoproteins, cyclic nucleotides, that are sensed by pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) such as Toll-like, NOD-like and RIG-like receptors. Historically, these have been studied in the context of the immune system. But data of the last couple of years has shown that these MAMPs, through their corresponding PRRs, can also have other biological effects on a variety of tissues and organs besides those relevant to the immune response.

In Dr. Boneca's lab, they focus on studying PGN fragments derived from the intestinal flora that disseminate to distant organs such as the brain, dissect the mechanisms of transport and detoxification. They have first developed tools to track PGN fragments in host. Then, they have studied the biological effects these PGN fragments on metabolism and on target organs such as the intestine, the immune system, the liver, and the brain. Finally, they have been dissecting the molecular mechanisms driving both beneficial and deleterious effects that these PGN fragments have in distinct diseases such as cancer or Crohn’s disease.

Host: Allison Williams