Rousset Lab

Research focus

ERC Starting Grant · 2025

Conservation of defense and anti-defense mechanisms across the tree of life

Across the tree of life, genetic conflicts between hosts and pathogens have fueled the diversification of intracellular defenses that collectively define innate immunity. While prokaryotic and eukaryotic immunity have long been considered distinct, the recent discoveries of multiple defense systems protecting bacteria against viruses called phages have profoundly challenged this paradigm. In particular, some components of eukaryotic innate immunity were shown to have a deep evolutionary origin in bacterial defenses. The existence of ancient immune components suggests that phage-bacteria interactions can illuminate the genetic conflicts between hosts and pathogens across the tree of life,…

From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.