Etienne Lab

Research focus

ERC Consolidator Grant · 2025

Functional evolution of the cell autonomous innate immunity in mammals

Cell-autonomous innate immunity is the first line of defense against pathogens and is crucial in infections, viral cross-species transmissions and autoimmunity. In mammals, it is notably composed of proteins from the interferon pathway inhibiting viruses within infected cells. In turn, viruses evade or antagonize immunity, leading to virus-host evolutionary arms-races. Beyond classic adaptation by site-specific positive selection, we discovered cases of gene duplications with divergence in gene expression and sequence, including by protein domain rearrangements, that appear adaptive in Myotis bats. I thus hypothesize that recurrent gene duplications and domain rearrangements represent…

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