I am an assistant professor in the Bioinfo team at LISN - Université Paris-Saclay since 09/2020. As an evolutionary biologist I am particularly interested in deciphering selective from non-adaptive processes that drive the evolution of genome content. I focus on the evolutionary constraints associated with recombination. I use either phylogenetics, population genomics or comparative genetics approaches. 

Understanding the neutral genetic diversity is important because it serves as a key indicator for making inferences about species' resilience to environmental changes or for reconstructing the demographic history of populations, providing insights into their past population sizes, migration patterns, and long-term viability. The impact of reproductive strategies on neutral genetic diversity is frequently overlooked in population genetics. A first project with a forthcoming paper from my team, reveals that selective sweeps can severely reduce neutral genomic diversity under facultative sex and rare meiotic recombinations. We are showing that selection acting on linked sites can reduce the variation at neutral loci by genetic linkage.  I will move forward in that direction by studying the effect of facultative sex on the efficiency of other evolutionary forces such as negative selection, demography and biased gene conversion.

A second project aims to understand the origin of the genetic diversity at the population level in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, also known as the budding yeast. Yeast has been used by human societies for millenia for baking and distilling alcoholic beverages. Additionally, this species has served as a model organism for nearly a century to decipher the principles of eukaryotic  genetics. However, recent large-scale population genomics data have challenged our understanding of the canonical life cycle of the species as it is classically described in textbooks, thereby suggesting unanticipated levels of genetic complexity. I supervise a phD student in collaboration with Gilles Fischer (LCQB, Sorbonne University) and Sarah Cohen-Boulakia (LISN, Paris-Saclay University).

A third project studies the impact of cultural transmission of reproductive success in humans. It has been previously shown in humans that children from large families tend to have a larger number of offsprings. We are elucidating how such a mecanism could interfere with demographic inferences or the estimates of polygenic selection. I collaborate with Frédéric Austerlitz (CNRS, Musée de l'Homme), Flora Jay (LISN, Paris-Saclay University) and Maud Fagny (INRAe le Moulon, Paris-Saclay University).

A fourth project studies the genetic content of the start of most protein-coding genes in animals which is marked by a spike in GC-content. This GC- peak reaches its maximum ~70 nucleotides downstream of the transcriptional start site (TSS) and gradually slopes down. We are trying to figure out what are the molecular processes on top of natural selection that impact the long term genetic content of genes. I work in collaboration with Alexander Palazzo (Toronto University) and Andrew Eckford (York University).

As a postdoc, I showed that more than 95% of the human genomic diversity is affected by background selection and/or biased gene conversion towards GC (gBGC). I showed that these two mechanisms bias the population genetics inferences of demography. I also studied patterns of genetic diversity in regions of low recombination in humans and showed that associative pseudo-overdominance might counteract the effect of background selection. 

During my PhD (2013 - 2016), I developed a codon-based model that disentangle the role of mutational bias from synonymous codon preferences on the evolution of genes in bacterias. I also quantified the importance of both translational selection and gBGC on the evolution of codon usage (i.e. GC3) in humans. 

For more details, see the "Publications" webpage.

I'm French born in 1989. I grew up in Paris, moved to Lyon to pursue my undergraduate studies and lived 3 years in Switzerland as a postdoc. Since 2019, I'm back in Paris.

I am married with two young kids.

I'm sociable, open-minded and fancy discussing with others about science and/or small-talks. I am well-organised and rather a frank person.

During my free-time I enjoy cooking and inviting friends for dinner (& more occasionally going to fancy unaffordable restaurants). I'm also keen to do outdoors activities like cycling for a weekend, hiking for a day or swimming to stay fit. For small talks, I keep myself up-to-date by listening to the radio and podcasts; I also watch plenty of series.