Programme details

A portrait of Sven Saupe, geneticist and director of research at the Institut de biochimie et génétique cellulaires (IBGC) in Bordeaux, bronze medal of the CNRS in 2004.
Sven Saupe tells about his path and what had led him to fundamental research. His field of research concerns the prion that infects the podospora anserina, a small fungus that grows on rabbit faeces .The prion got much media attention during the mad cow episode. It is an infectious agent that presents the particularity of not having any DNA or RNA because it does not have any nucleic acid. Therefore, it kills neurons… His research is fundamental in order to be able to better understand diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.