Change is a constant when you’re a researcher. You start off by sitting at your lab bench for hours on end, running experiments over and over again. You publish papers, supervise interns and PhD students, help set up projects, and slowly but surely leave your everyday life in a white coat behind you. Sébastien is now at a turning point in his career, one that lies between research itself and research management. “I try to maintain a connection with the lab bench for two reasons, the first of them being that I love it. Then there’s the fact that when you’re supervising people, you need to keep in touch with the realities of conducting experiments, which is often a lot more complicated than it looks on paper.”
A lifelong biology devotee, Sébastien did an Erasmus year at Imperial College London before completing a master’s degree in Food Science at Massy. Then came his PhD thesis at INRAE in Jouy-en-Josas, followed by postdoctoral research at the Institut Cochin in Paris. Finally, he passed his INRAE examination in October 2005 and joined the laboratory as a researcher.
Committed and (mostly) cheerful, Sébastien applies his expertise to studying messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), inherently unstable molecules that carry the genetic information that makes proteins. These dynamic cycles of production and degradation allow cells to react extremely quickly when they need to reprogramme specific functions and act as molecular switches.“I try to understand how cells use their mRNA to control that ability to switch some genes off and others on.”
The most versatile of scientists, Sébastien is blessed with a vivid imagination and loves what he does: “We have an amazing job with a healthy dose of freedom.”
