During my PhD thesis I studied different bacterial partners associated with deep sea invertebrate using different techniques like Fluorescent In Situ Hybridization (FISH); Next generation sequencing; Metagenomes and Metatranscriptome analysis.
My principal project focus on deep sea mussels belonging to the Bathymodiolus genus. These mussels are found worldwide at cold seeps and hydrothermal vents, they have been studied for decades for their unique association with gammaproteobacterial chemoautotroph which are settled in the host gill epithelia. Additionally to the main endosymbiont many Bathymodiolus species are associated with other low abundance bacterial phylotypes. My work was to characterize two of these secondary associated bacteria: an epibiotic epsilonproteobacteria and an intranuclear parasite.

A second part of my PhD thesis is the characterization of bacterial ectosymbiotic populations associated to a recently described  deep sea shrimp Rimicaris hybisae found on the Cayman Rise. These shrimps occur at two vent site located 20km and 2500m depth apart. These two vents fields are very distinct not only in depth but also in chemical composition which is the perfect setting to have a close look at the environment influence on ectosymbiotic populations compositions.
Funded by the Marie Curie International Training Network 7 (ITN)