Professor Patrick Forterre, born 21 August 1949 in Paris, is a French writer and researcher in biology. He is Head of the Department of Microbiology at the

Pasteur Institute The Pasteur Institute (french: Institut Pasteur) 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 f ...

and is known for his work on

Archaea Archaea ( ; singular archaeon ) is a domain of single-celled organisms. These microorganisms lack cell nuclei and are therefore prokaryotes. Archaea were initially classified as bacteria, receiving the name archaebacteria (in the Archaebac ...

viruses A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's 1 ...

and the

evolution of life Evolution is change in the heredity, heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the Gene expression, expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to ...

. Forterre was the first to use the abbreviation of "

Last Universal Common Ancestor The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is the most recent population from which all organisms now living on Earth share common descent—the most recent common ancestor of all current life on Earth. This includes all cellular organisms; t ...

", or "LUCA", in a 1999 paper.

Biography

In 1988, he became head of a research team at the Institute of Genetics and Microbiology (IGM) in

Orsay Orsay () is a Communes of France, commune in the Essonne Departments of France, department in Île-de-France in northern France. It is located in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France, from the Kilometre Zero, centre of Paris. A fortifie ...

and directed research on Archaea, the new living area discovered in 1977 by

Carl Woese Carl Richard Woese (; July 15, 1928 – December 30, 2012) was an American microbiologist and biophysicist. Woese is famous for defining the Archaea (a new domain of life) in 1977 through a pioneering phylogenetic taxonomy of 16S ribosomal RNA, ...

. In 2004, he joined the Pasteur Institute as Director of Microbiology . Patrick Forterre is particularly known for his theories on evolution and his stances on the recognition of viruses as living beings in their own right. He works as a scientist in the documentary film ''Species of Species'', produced in 2008.

Scientific articles

* Patrick Forterre, Simonetta Gribaldo & Céline Brochier
(Luca: in search of the nearest universal common ancestor)
(''

Luca The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is the most recent population from which all organisms now living on Earth share common descent—the most recent common ancestor of all current life on Earth. This includes all cellular organisms; th ...

: à la recherche du plus proche ancêtre commun universel''), Médecine / Sciences, vol. 21, n°10, 2005, pp. 860–865 * Simonetta Gribaldo, Patrick Forterre et Céline Brochier-Armanet
The Archaea: evolution and diversity of the third domain of life
(''Les Archaea : évolution et diversité du troisième domaine du vivant'', Bull. Soc. Fr. Microbiol., vol. 23, n°3, 2008, pp. 137–145 * Patrick Forterre, ''Viruses back on the scene'' (Les virus à nouveau sur le devant de la scène), ''Biologie Aujourd’hui'', vol.207, n°3,

Société de biologie The Société de biologie is a learned society founded in Paris in 1848. The society was conceived during the French Revolution of 1848. The members of the society held regular meetings and published the proceedings in a new scientific journal. The ...

, 13 décembre 2013, pp. 153–168 * Patrick Forterre, ''The Viral Cell Cog of Life'', (''La cellule virale rouage de la vie''), ''

Pour la Science Pour may refer to these people: * Kour Pour (born 1987), British artist of part-Iranian descent * Mehdi Niyayesh Pour (born 1992), Iranian footballer * Mojtaba Mobini Pour (born 1991), Iranian footballer * Pouya Jalili Pour (born 1976), Iranian si ...

'', n°469, special issue: ''Le nouveau monde des microbes'', Novembre 2016, pp. 42–49
, text=résumé

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Forterre, Patrick 20th-century French biologists 20th-century French non-fiction writers 21st-century biologists 21st-century French non-fiction writers Scientists from Paris 1949 births French virologists French science writers Evolutionary biologists Evolutionary psychologists Living people