Stéphanie Jacquet, researcher from Lyon, works in particular on bats to understand their great resistance to viruses.
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L'Oréal-Unesco Foundation
On the occasion of the Fête de la science, the L'Oréal-Unesco foundation rewards each year young researchers with remarkable backgrounds to encourage female vocations in the sciences.
This year, Stéphanie Jacquet, researcher in Lyon, is one of the laureates.
The young woman, passionate about parasites, is currently working on bats and their resistance to viruses.
When she left the island of Saint-Martin (West Indies), her bac in hand, to continue her studies in metropolitan France, she was moving towards a career as a teacher.
But it is ultimately to parasites of all kinds and their hosts that she devoted a large part of her studies and research.
An already full scientific career for which Stéphanie Jacquet, post-doctoral fellow in Lyon, is preparing to be rewarded.
The 33-year-old is indeed one of the 2020 winners of the L'Oréal-Unesco scholarship, an annual prize intended to reward and encourage female vocations in science.
“If this award helps encourage other young girls who are in doubt, that would be great.
Women should not close their doors.
Science is not gendered, it is universal.
There is a variety of backgrounds and themes, whatever our genre or our origins, ”emphasizes Stéphanie Jacquet.
This researcher, now attached to the International Center for Research in Infectiology and the Laboratory of Biometrics and Evolutionary Biology in Lyon, landed in Montpellier at 18, with desires in mind but no certainty.
“I loved science, I was a good student.
But there was nothing mapped out.
I just knew that I wanted to transmit, to teach ”.
The role played by parasites
The young woman, who imagines herself a teacher, takes a bachelor's degree in organism biology, then enrolls in a master's degree.
That year, she was fascinated by a course in parasitology.
“The teacher told us about a parasite which, to infect a cow, first contaminated an ant and then manipulated it so that it hides in grass and is easily ingested by the cow,” she recalls.
I found it hyperintelligent.
This showed the diversity of the mechanisms employed by microorganisms ”.
From then on, his curriculum is more oriented around parasites and their role in infectious diseases.
For her thesis, she focuses on a gnat that participated in the circulation of bluetongue, which affects domestic ruminants in Africa but also in Europe.
Then, in 2016, his post-doctoral research focused on the bat, which came back despite itself, with the Covid 19, on the front of the stage.
“Our work began long before the coronavirus.
Obviously, we cannot ignore the context.
This shows the fundamental nature of studying the different actors and mechanisms involved in the circulation of pathogens, ”emphasizes the scientist, whose work focuses more on the small mammal as a host of viruses rather than as a transmitter of diseases.
A closer look at the bat's super immune system
Because for millions of years, the bat has harbored multiple viruses.
“Its particularity is that it does not seem to develop symptoms for viruses which are nevertheless pathogenic for other species including humans,” adds Stéphanie Jacquet.
Our project therefore consists of studying how its innate immune system has adapted to viral infections to determine what differentiates it from other mammals.
And understand how it defends itself against viruses ”.
Long-term work which, in the midst of the coronavirus epidemic, opens the field to a multitude of other possible research.
“The more we discover things, the more it poses other questions,” emphasizes the young researcher with a smile.
I measure the health and economic stake around infectious diseases.
Contributing a little to advancing knowledge motivates me a lot ”.
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