Status:Closed

Opening date: 6 May 2024

Closing date: 7 June 2024

Master's internship

Objective of the call for proposals

By supporting technological or methodological development within leading technology platforms, this call offers the opportunity to train Master's students in the latest technologies, and promotes access by the scientific community to a cutting-edge technological offering for its research work.

This year, following the joint conference organized in 2023 at the interface of cancer and microbiology, and to reinforce the interdisciplinary nature of their actions, the IM2B and Cancer and Immunology Institutes (ICI) have decided to open their "internship" call for proposals to inter-institute projects to encourage the development of collaborations between their communities.

Given IM2B's threefold objective of enhancing the value of its technology platforms, strengthening its Master's training programs by developing interdisciplinarity and professionalization, and fostering the launch of new collaborations with ICI, this call for proposals aims to finance up to 4 Master's 2 internships in IM2B's technology platforms for the academic year 2024-2025, by encouraging the submission of projects carried out in collaboration with another platform or laboratory within the scope of ICI.

These internships must meet the highest standards of quality and innovation.

Tender process

This call for proposals is divided into two stages:

  1. Call for internship projects open to staff from IM2B technology platforms.

    Projects may be carried out by the platform alone, or as part of a collaboration between two platforms, or between a platform and a laboratory, either within the IM2B or as part of a collaboration with the ICI institute.

    The Training Committee selects up to 4 internship projects.

  2. Call for applications and submission of one to three applications by internship coordinators.

    Validation of applications by the Training Committee.

     

Eligibility requirements

  • The project must involve technological and/or methodological development(s) to be implemented by an IM2B technology platform;
  • The internship is supervised by a technology platform staff member;

  • The application must comply with the IM2B timetable and framework.

     

Selection criteria

The internship coordinators pre-select one to three candidates, according to the following criteria:

  • Academic quality of the candidate (letter of recommendation, rankings and honors);
  • Ability to adapt and work on a technological/methodological development project;

  • Match between the candidate's profile, the internship project and his/her career plan.

     

Documents

Agnès
Kammoun
Project manager, Deputy Co-Director Technology platforms and value enhancement
IMM
agnes.kammoun@univ-amu.fr

Testimonials

Maxime Bizet

IM2B financed my M2 chemistry internship, which I carried out between the "Protein Expression Facility" (PEF) technology platform and the "Bioenergetics and Protein Engineering" Laboratory (BIP). This work enabled me to acquire interdisciplinary skills that are in line with my professional project at the chemistry-biology interface, in particular as part of my PhD at BIP.

See all testimonials

Awardees

  • Awardees

    2024
    Interdisciplinary Research

    Enzymatic digestions alternative to trypsin and targeted quantitative proteomics for proteins recalcitrant to mass spectrometry

    Project leader(s)
    Mary DE LA SAYETTE
    Laboratory(s)
    Bioenergetics and Protein Engineering Laboratory (BIP) & Mediterranean Institute of Microbiology (IMM)
    Interdisciplinary Research

    Enzymatic digestions alternative to trypsin and targeted quantitative proteomics for proteins recalcitrant to mass spectrometry

    Project leader(s)
    Mary DE LA SAYETTE
    Laboratory(s)
    Bioenergetics and Protein Engineering Laboratory (BIP) & Mediterranean Institute of Microbiology (IMM)

    Abstract:

    The photosynthetic purple bacterium Rubrivivax (R.) gelatinosus possesses an original copper resistance system thanks to an operon encoding 3 periplasmic proteins: CopI, CopJ and CopH. These proteins have homologs in other environmental as well as pathogenic bacteria, and some of these bacteria lack systems such as Cu oxidase or the Cus export complex. In order to gain a better understanding of this mechanism, and to complement the in vitro studies carried out at BIP, it is important to carry out in vivo studies as well. In this context, proteomic studies are ideally suited to determine which part of the R. gelatinosus proteome is affected by copper or other metal stress. However, difficulties can be encountered in detecting certain expressed proteins. This is particularly true of the CopH protein, whose sequence has very few trypsin cleavage sites (K (0), R (3), on 97 AA) and the only R residues are located at the end of the sequence, generating only 1 trypsin peptide that can be analyzed under conventional conditions.
    In order to improve this, we have established new protocols using trypsin/chymotrypsin to digest CopH in peptides identifiable by LC- MS/MS. This biochemical method combined with targeted proteomics experiments allowed a significant improvement in the detection of CopH. We applied those methods to study the effect of a Cu stress in vivo on the whole proteome of R. gelatinosus under photosynthetic or microaerobic conditions. Overexpression of several proteins is detected under Cu stress including all those of the Cop operon except CopH. The results obtained led us to hypothezise that either CopH is used as a primary barrier against Cu and is then degraded or that it is exported outside of the cell. Further analyses of the global proteomic experiments in vivo are underway to help deciphering the Cu resistance mechanism of R. gelatinosus.

    Co-supervisors :

    • Régine LEBRUN (IMM)
    • Pierre DORLET (BIP)
    See the associated call for project

  • Awardees

    2024
    Interdisciplinary Research

    Development of a microfluidic device for the study of the dynamics and degradation of lipid droplets using Spinning Disk microscopy in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

    Project leader(s)
    Maxime BASTIDE
    Laboratory(s)
    Aix-Marseille Institute of Biosciences and Biotechnologies (BIAM)
    Interdisciplinary Research

    Development of a microfluidic device for the study of the dynamics and degradation of lipid droplets using Spinning Disk microscopy in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

    Project leader(s)
    Maxime BASTIDE
    Laboratory(s)
    Aix-Marseille Institute of Biosciences and Biotechnologies (BIAM)

    Abstract:

    Lipid droplets (LDs) are dynamic organelles that play a pivotal role in the cellular response to environmental stress by facilitating energy storage and lipid metabolism. In Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, the degradation of triacylglycerols (TAGs) stored in LDs during nitrogen (N) resupply represents a critical metabolic switch, yet the mechanisms driving LD remodelling and interaction with other organelles remain poorly understood. The objective of this study was to elucidate the role of the DGTT3 gene, which encodes a type-2 diacylglycerol acyltransferase, in TAG resynthesis during LD turnover. In addition, the study sought to developing imaging and microfluidic tools to study the dynamics of LD degradation in real time. We conducted a study to investigate the physiological characteristics of dgtt3 knock-out mutants (dgtt3-1 and dgtt3-2). Our findings revealed that dgtt3-1 exhibited a greater accumulation of larger lipid droplets (LDs) during the process of triacylglycerol (TAG) remobilisation. In addition, dgtt3-1 displayed a divergent phenotype compared to dgtt3-2, suggesting the presence of alternative metabolic pathways that may contribute to these observed differences. Fluorescence microscopy in conjunction with BODIPY staining, in addition to quantitative image analysis employing an ImageJ macro, demonstrated a correlation between the number of LDs per cell and the TAG content quantitated by HP-TLC. However, this analysis did not reveal any discernible indications of the micro-LDs phenotype. It will be necessary to generate our own knock-out mutant to investigate the real impact of knock out, given the lack of consistency between the two mutants. In order to further explore organelle interactions during LD breakdown, reporter constructs targeting peroxisomes (GFY5) and mitochondria (CAG1), fused with fluorescent markers, were developed. Despite the initial transformation success being low due to challenges with large plasmid size and random genomic insertion, optimisation efforts, including testing in the UVM4 strain known to be efficient in expressing transgenes, are ongoing. A novel microfluidic setup was initiated. This setup was based on a design previously described by literature to enable long-term imaging of single cells. While preliminary results were limited by dye sensitivity and PDMS absorption, this platform still needs optimization. However, it showed promise for future real-time observation of lipid remodelling.

    Supervisor :

    • Marie BERTRAND (BIAM)

    Credit: Maxime BASTIDE

    See the associated call for project