Genetic complexity of living systems

Welcome to the lab "Genetic complexity of living systems"

      Principal Investigators: Gaël YVERT (lab head) and Fabien DUVEAU

Our research group is interested in the fundamental genetic mechanisms underlying inter-individual phenotypic differences. We wish to better understand why some individuals are more likely than others to develop specific traits. This question is at the heart of personalized medicine: using patients' DNA information will help predict the outcome of a specific treatment. For most cases of common health traits, personalized care is not ready yet because the contribution of DNA variation is very complex. For example, many carriers of a mutation predisposing to cancer will not necessarily declare the disease. We use very powerful experimental models, such as the yeast S. cerevisiae, and modern genomics and bioinformatics tools to address fundamental questions about the complexity by which genotypes control phenotypic variations. As an academic research lab, our aim is to make fundamental discoveries on this topic and diffuse openly our results, to increase current understanding on genetic predisposition to disease, and to transfer quantitative genetics methods to microbiologists. The group was created in 2005 and is part of the Laboratory of Biology and Modelling of the Cell, one of many research departments of Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon. We are affiliated to three institutions: Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and University Claude Bernard de Lyon. We are also members of BioSyL, the local community working on systems biology. For more information about our scientific environment, please click here.