Nicolas Le Novère is a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

and French biologist. His research focuses on modeling

signaling pathways Signal transduction is the process by which a chemical or physical signal is transmitted through a cell as a series of molecular events. Proteins responsible for detecting stimuli are generally termed receptors, although in some cases the term ...

and developing tools to share

mathematical models A mathematical model is an abstract description of a concrete system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed ''mathematical modeling''. Mathematical models are used in applied mathemati ...

Education

Le Novère obtained his

Baccalauréat The ''baccalauréat'' (; ), often known in France colloquially as the ''bac'', is a French national academic qualification that students can obtain at the completion of their secondary education (at the end of the ''lycée'') by meeting certain ...

at the Prytanée National Militaire. He received a MSc (1993) in Biology and Biochemistry from the

École Normale Supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...

, a BSc in Cellular Biology and Physiology (1991), and a PhD in Molecular and Cellular

Pharmacology Pharmacology is the science of drugs and medications, including a substance's origin, composition, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, therapeutic use, and toxicology. More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur betwee ...

(1998) from the

Pierre and Marie Curie University Pierre and Marie Curie University ( , UPMC), also known as Paris VI, was a public research university in Paris, France, from 1971 to 2017. The university was located on the Jussieu Campus in the Latin Quarter of the 5th arrondissement of Paris, ...

. From 1999 to 2001, he was a

Postdoctoral Fellow A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary academ ...

at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

(UK).

Research

The first part of Le Novère's career, in the laboratory of

Jean-Pierre Changeux Jean-Pierre Changeux (; born 6 April 1936) is a French neuroscientist known for his research in several fields of biology, from the structure and function of proteins (with a focus on the allosteric proteins), to the early development of the ner ...

at the

Pasteur Institute The Pasteur Institute (, ) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax and rabies. Th ...

, was focused on studying

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, or nAChRs, are receptor polypeptides that respond to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Nicotinic receptors also respond to drugs such as the agonist nicotine. They are found in the central and peripheral ner ...

in the brain. He reconstructed their phylogeny, predicted and modeled their structure. He also investigated the role of the alpha6 subunit in the dopaminergic neurons of the mesencephalon. During his post-doctoral fellowship in the group of Dennis Bray at the

, he modeled the molecular networks underlying bacterial

chemotaxis Chemotaxis (from ''chemical substance, chemo-'' + ''taxis'') is the movement of an organism or entity in response to a chemical stimulus. Somatic cells, bacteria, and other single-cell organism, single-cell or multicellular organisms direct thei ...

. Le Novère then became involved in the development standards to share

such as

SBML The Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) is a representation format, based on XML, for communicating and storing computational models of biological processes. It is a free and open standard with widespread software support and a community of us ...

, of which he would later become editor. In 2003, Le Novère built a research group at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). The group studied the

underlying

synaptic plasticity In neuroscience, synaptic plasticity is the ability of synapses to Chemical synapse#Synaptic strength, strengthen or weaken over time, in response to increases or decreases in their activity. Since memory, memories are postulated to be represent ...

, in particular the allosteric calcium sensors. In parallel, his group coordinated the development of a consistent set of standards in systems biology, including the graphical notation SBGN, the guidelines

MIRIAM Miriam (, lit. ‘rebellion’) is described in the Hebrew Bible as the daughter of Amram and Jochebed, and the older sister of Moses and Aaron. She was a prophetess and first appears in the Book of Exodus. The Torah refers to her as "Miria ...

and

MIASE The minimum information about a simulation experiment (MIASE){{cite journal, author1=D. Waltemath , author2=Richard Adams , author3=Daniel A. Beard , author4=rank T. Bergmann , author5=Upinder S. Bhalla , author6=Randall Britten , author7=Vijayalak ...

, the languages SED-ML and PharmML, and ontologies such as the Systems Biology Ontology. He also created

BioModels Database BioModels is a free and open-source repository for storing, exchanging and retrieving quantitative models of biological interest created in 2006. All the models in the curated section of BioModels Database have been described in peer-reviewed scie ...

and the Identifiers.org URIs. Le Novère moved his group to the

Babraham Institute The Babraham Institute is a life sciences research institution focussing on healthy ageing. The Babraham Institute is based on the Babraham Research Campus, partly occupying a former manor house, but also laboratory and science facility buil ...

from 2012 to 2018. He was associate editor of the journals '' BMC Systems Biology'' and '' npj Systems Biology and Applications'' until September 2018. He has been section head for the section Systems and Network Biology of the Faculty of 1000 from 2017 to 2018. Senior member of the

International Society for Computational Biology The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) is a scholarly society for researchers in computational biology and bioinformatics. The society was founded in 1997 to provide a stable financial home for the Intelligent Systems for Mo ...

, he served on its board of directors from 2017 to 2018.

Conviction

In September 2018, Le Novère was sentenced for 8 month (suspended for 2 years) when he admitted downloading indecent images of a child and possession of an extreme pornographic image. Subsequently, he was dismissed from the Babraham Institute where he was working.

References

External links

Nicolas Le Novère's Google Scholar page

BioModels Database

Identifiers.org URIs and resolving system

The COMBINE initiative
{{DEFAULTSORT:Le Novere, Nicolas French bioinformaticians Living people French biologists 1969 births