2022 is the year of the France-Portugal cooperation, organized by the French and Portuguese Ministries for Europe, Foreign Affairs and Culture.
This “France-Portugal 2022” season is an opportunity to highlight many events marking the cooperation between the two countries, including several in the field of Higher Education and Research.
In this context, the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation and the Academy of Sciences are pleased to propose a scientific prize which distinguishes existing cooperation between French and Portuguese teams, and to offer them an opportunity to deepen the cooperation in the years to come. The four prizes awarded in 2022 cover all scientific disciplines.
In this frame, the collaboration carried out for many years by Eva Jakab Toth with the University of Coimbra has been rewarded with the Mariano Gago Prize. This collaboration concerns the development of imaging agents based on metalloporphyrins for the detection of tissue redox states.
The official award ceremony helded at the Academy of Sciences on Tuesday, June 21, 2022.
The bacterial Rho factor is a molecular motor that induces genome-wide transcription termination. Rho is essential in many species, including in Mycobacterium tuberculosis where inactivation of the rho gene leads to rapid death. Nevertheless, the Rho factor of M. tuberculosis [MtbRho] displays idiosyncrasies, including resistance to the antibiotic bicyclomycin [BCM], which remain unexplained. To identify the molecular origin of these idiosyncrasies, we solved the structure of MtbRho by cryo-EM at 3.3 Å. This atomic structure notably reveals a leucine → methionine substitution that creates steric hindrance in the binding pockets of BCM, close to the ATPase sites, thereby conferring resistance to BCM at the expanse of molecular motor efficiency. Our work contributes to explain the unusual properties of MtbRho and provides groundwork for the development of new antibiotics.
Chronic Kidney Diseases (CKD) are a growing scourge worldwide, particularly in less developed countries with intensive agriculture. Several risk factors have been identified, but an undetermined etiology (CKDu) remains which may be linked to pesticides (Floris et al., 2021).
J.-M. Bonmatin participated in a study in Sri Lanka published in Scientific Reports late 2021 (Taira et al., 2021). Although the size of the study remains statistically modest, the authors (members of the Task Force on Systemic Pesticide) showed that the concentrations of several neonicotinoids measured in urine were related to the biomarkers Cystatin-C and L-FABP as well as to the neurophysiological symptoms observed. The authors conclude that the urinary concentrations of these neonicotinoids are a risk factor for tubular disorders of the kidney. This is another element that adds to our previous publications (e.g., Ichikawa et al., 2019 and Bonmatin et al., 2021) on the human health effects of these insecticides.
Neonicotinoids, known as "bee killers" and which are the source of major impacts on biodiversity (invertebrates and vertebrates) are still widely used for rice cultivation in Asia (Prihandiani et al., 2021). These insecticides have been banned in France since 2018 (except for sugar beet). They are in the process of being banned in Sri Lanka.
Référence : Taira K, Kawakami T, Weragoda SK, Herath HMAS, Ikenaka Y, Fujioka K, Hemachandra M, Pallewatta N, Aoyama Y, Ishizuka M, Bonmatin JM & Komori M (2021) Scientific Reports, 11, 22484.
