Bacteria Zoonoses unit, Laboratory for Animal Health, Maisons-Alfort and Dozulé Sites (ANSES)

Research

Studies on animal health in this laboratory are focused on four main goals:

• Management of major animal epidemics (foot-and-mouth disease, bluetongue virus, etc.).
• Vacterial, viral and parasitic zoonoses,
• Emerging multi-species infectious animal diseases, particularly vector-borne diseases and opportunistic fungal infections,
• les infections persistantes et/ou émergentes d’importance majeure pour la filière équine.

The bacterial zoonoses unit works on Brucella sp., Chlamydia, Mycobacterium sp., Bacillus anthracis, Burkholderia sp. ; vector-transmitted zoonotic bacteria such as Francisella tularensis:

• Development of tools for phenotypic or molecular differentiation  of bacterial strains enable a more precise epidemiological monitoring of outbreaks and the establishment of relations between animal outbreaks and human cases;
• Towards “One Health” approaches, aimes at studying the interactions between pathogenic agents, host species and the environment. Several projects are dedicated to the surveillance of wild animals and the role of different species in the transmission of pathogenic agents. Other projects are aimed on the presence and persistence in the environment, notable water bodies, with the possibility to investigate the survival of pathogens in amoeba.
• Applicating new high-throughput technologies to reference activities (notably molecular strain typing; conception of arrays for multipathogen detection of differential diagnonses) and research (phylogeographical approaches; studies of virulence genes or genes implicated in survival; modeling studies associated with transmission pathways). Next generation sequencing (NGS) is a biotechnological revolution over recent years that enables sequencing of large quantities of genomes in record times and at abordable costs.
• Epidemiological studies on animals in production to validate diagnostic and/or screening tools, in wild animals and/or in vectors for health surveillance, identification of reservoirs in a population and/or victims of bacterial infections in partnership with other laboratories of Anses and other organizations.  

Tutelage: ANSES - ENVA