Ludivine Michaudet

Ludivine Michaudet What is the effect of hydrothermal activity on microbial communities involved in the iron cycle around different sites Or To try to understand how bacteria use iron in hydrothermal environments.

Ludivine is working on two major axes:

The first one consists of trying to grow microorganisms involved in the iron cycle to understand them better.

The second one consists in extracting DNA from microorganisms living in those environments to try to rebuild genomes with different tools of bioinformatics. This will enable her to target specific genes and metabolic pathways to understand how it works.

Ludivine wants to prove that a weakly active hydrothermal site is as rich and important as the more actives ones, which are better studied.

Why this subject ?

During her internship with Eva Pouder, Ludivine realized that she wanted to deepen her knowledge regarding marine hydrothermal environments. Those are hard to reach and very mysterious at depths over 3,000 meters (1,864 miles) below sea level. The iron cycle appears also very interesting to Ludivine because it is an element essential to life. Ludivine is trying to take part in the preservation of the seabed by studying it.

A funny story related to this subject ?

During the M2 internship, Ludivine, with the help of Eva (her tutor), realized out enrichment cultures to try to isolate bacteria that could use iron. They succeeded in isolating a Vibrio species. Before Ludivine came for the internship, Eva had already succeeded in isolating the same strain. These bacteria are known as heterotrophs, which means they use organic matter, but it was not known that these bacteria could develop without it. It seemed absurd at the time, and everyone laughed about it. Now they are writing the first scientific paper on this subject.