The Libis team is interested in disco-vering novel bioactive microbial metabolites. Microbial metabolites play important roles in medicine and they are a key source of antibiotics, anticancer agents or immuno-suppressants. We develop sequencing, bioinformatics and synthetic biology methods to rapidly detect and characterize novel genes responsible for the biosynthesis of cryptic microbial metabolites.

The Pandi team research focuses on the development of de novo antimicrobial peptides via a combined approach of machine learning and synthetic biology. Additionally, we use machine learning models to predict and design phase-separating polypeptides and build codon and gene expression language models.

Along this scientific journey, we are glad to count among our favorite collaborators, Aude Bernheim, group leader of the Molecular Diversity of Microbes (MDM) Lab at Institut Pasteur. MDM lab research focuses on anti-phage immune systems, trying to understand evolutionary patterns and molecular mechanisms of these systems but also how to use them for medical applications.