Lea Flechon
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Education
- Université de Rennes 1 (France), Master in Bioinformatics and Genomics (2013-2015)
- Université de Lille 1 (France), Master in Ecology (2010-2012)
Research
The evolutionary success of herbivorous insects is in large part due to the great diversity of their feeding behaviors. Among these insects, several species have developed mechanisms to finely manipulate the physiology of their host plants by suppressing or hijacking plant defenses and exploiting the food source to adapt to their nutritional needs. This type of plant manipulation was observed among species of leaf miners and galling insects that respectively can induce 'green islands' or galls. Molecules secreted by the insect (in saliva, venom, ovarian fluid ...) called effectors are likely to play a key role in the manipulation of plants. However, to date these insect effectors involved in plant manipulation are still poorly understood. The objective of my internship at the Whiteman Lab is to identify effector candidates in transcriptomic data of five insect species (1 leaf miner, 1 'pseudo-gall' inducer, 3 galling insects) known to be tree pests.