22 January 2017

A molecule considered up until now as cellular waste could become the key to fight bacteria highly resistant to antibiotics! This is the breakthrough made by Éric Massé, which has earned him the Prix institutionnel de la recherche et de la création 2016 (2016 institutional award for research and creation) awarded by the Université de Sherbrooke.

With his team, this professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences studied the activity of a fragment derived from bacterial ribonucleic acid (RNA – essential in the transfer of the genetic code required to create proteins). They discovered a regulating molecule that affects the sensitivity of a bacterium to antibiotics.

Université de Sherbrooke’s chancelor Luce Samoisette and vice-chancelor Jacques Beauvais besides Éric Massé and members of his team, Marie-Claude Carrier and David Lalaouna.

In addition to discovering this distinctive characteristic in the metabolism of bacteria, Professor Massé’s team has developed a tool for analyzing interactions between RNA molecules. This new purification technique, coupled with high-throughput sequencing, fills a technological gap and has already led to other advances.

Scientists from the United States, Portugal, and France are working with analytical tools developed at the UdeS to study the RNA fragments of various pathogenic bacteria.

As part of the awards ceremony, the Université de Sherbrooke honoured 24 other professors/researchers from its various faculties, who had received prestigious research awards during the year 2015-2016.

Sources: Université de Sherbrooke and La Tribune
Photo Credits: UdeS – Michel Caron