Pascale Cossart
Cossart in 2013.
Born (1948-03-21) 21 March 1948
Alma materLille University, Georgetown University, University of Paris
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsBacteriology
InstitutionsPasteur Institute

Pascale Cossart (born 21 March 1948) is a French bacteriologist who is affiliated with the Pasteur Institute of Paris. She is the foremost authority on Listeria monocytogenes,[2] a deadly and common food-borne pathogen responsible for encephalitis, meningitis, bacteremia, gastroenteritis, and other diseases.

Biography

Cossart was born in the north of France in 1948. She grew up and attended school in Arras.[3] Cossart earned a B.S. and M.S. from Lille University in 1968. She then earned an M.S. in chemistry from Georgetown University in 1971, and her Ph.D. in biochemistry at the Pasteur Institute and the University of Paris in 1977 (University Paris Diderot).[4] She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Pasteur Institute.[4] She is currently a Professor and Head of the Unité des Interactions Bactéries Cellules at the Pasteur Institute.[4] In 1998, she received the Richard Lounsbery Prize and the L'Oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science.[4] She was awarded the Balzan Prize for Infectious Diseases: Basic and Clinical Aspects in 2013.[5]

Works

Cossart's research has focused on infection by intracellular bacteria, and in particular the infectious agent Listeria monocytogenes.[4]

Listeria is a food-borne bacterial pathogen responsible for numerous illnesses and a mortality rate of 30%. The bacteria is one of the best models of intracellular parasitism because it is particularly hardy, able to survive in a variety of cells, cross multiple host barriers, and spreads through ActA, the protein responsible for actin-based motility.[6] Cossart's work has shed light on the genetic and biochemical processes that make Listeria so effective and lethal, identifying the bsh gene; regulatory mechanisms such as an RNA thermosensor that control expression of the virulence genes such as bsh; and the ways in which Listeria enters cells and crosses physiological barriers such as the blood–brain barrier, the intestinal barrier, and the placental barrier. The discovery by Cossart's lab of the interaction between L. monocytogenes' protein, internalin, and its cell receptor, E-cadherin, was the first such study that successfully demonstrated the molecular mechanism that permits a bacterial agent to cross the placental barrier.[3]

In 2009 Cossart published what she describes as the first "bacterial operon map"—the transcriptional program that regulates Listeria's behavior in different environmental conditions.[7] By comparing the sequences of Listeria drawn from soil and drawn from the human gut, Cossart identified non-coding RNAs that contribute to Listeria's virulence, identified additional RNA repressors, and determined that riboswitches can act both downstream and upstream.[3]

As part of her work she has also developed important biological tools, including a transgenic mouse that was the first animal model to overcome bacterial species-specificity. The mouse carried a human version of a host cell membrane receptor that L. monocytogenes used to enter cells.[3]

Significant publications

  • Cossart, Pascale; Boquet, Patrice; Normark, Staffan; Rappuoli, Rino, eds. (29 November 2004). Cellular Microbiology. Washington, DC, USA: ASM Press. doi:10.1128/9781555817633. ISBN 978-1-68367-203-6.
  • Finlay, B. Brett (2001). "Cracking Listeria' s Password". Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 292 (5522): 1665–1667. doi:10.1126/science.1062045. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 11387462. S2CID 12009460.
  • Toledo-Arana, Alejandro; Dussurget, Olivier; Nikitas, Georgios; Sesto, Nina; Guet-Revillet, Hélène; Balestrino, Damien; Loh, Edmund; Gripenland, Jonas; Tiensuu, Teresa; Vaitkevicius, Karolis; Barthelemy, Mathieu; Vergassola, Massimo; Nahori, Marie-Anne; Soubigou, Guillaume; Régnault, Béatrice; Coppée, Jean-Yves; Lecuit, Marc; Johansson, Jörgen; Cossart, Pascale (17 May 2009). "The Listeria transcriptional landscape from saprophytism to virulence". Nature. Springer Science and Business Media LLC. 459 (7249): 950–956. Bibcode:2009Natur.459..950T. doi:10.1038/nature08080. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 19448609. S2CID 4341657.

Awards, prizes, and honorary lectures

References

  1. 1 2 Louis-Jeantet Prize
  2. ↑ Sedwick, Caitlin (21 March 2011). "Pascale Cossart: The ins and outs of Listeria". Journal of Cell Biology. Rockefeller University Press. 192 (6): 904–905. doi:10.1083/jcb.1926pi. ISSN 1540-8140. PMC 3063141. PMID 21422225.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Cossart, Pascale (15 September 2023). "Raising a Bacterium to the Rank of a Model System: The Listeria Paradigm". Annual Review of Microbiology. 77 (1): 1–22. doi:10.1146/annurev-micro-110422-112841. ISSN 0066-4227.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "Pascale F. Cossart, PhD". Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Archived from the original on 13 June 2017. Retrieved 19 April 2016.
  5. ↑ "The Balzan Prizewinners 2013". International Balzan Prize Foundation. 9 September 2013. Archived from the original on 17 July 2014. Retrieved 19 April 2016.
  6. ↑ "Pascale Cossart", ASCB Newsletter, Dec. 2006, pp.32–34.
  7. ↑ Nature, 17 May 2009.
  8. 1 2 3 Hoffmann, Ilire Hasani, Robert. "Academy of Europe: Cossart Pascale". www.ae-info.org.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. ↑ "Pascale Cossart". German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
  10. ↑ "NIH Record—4/29/2003--Annual Pittman Lecture To Feature Pascale Cossart, May 7". nihrecord.nih.gov.
  11. ↑ "Invited Speakers » ASM Meeting 2018". asmmeeting.theasm.org.au. Archived from the original on 7 March 2019. Retrieved 14 March 2018.
  12. ↑ "FEMS-Lwoff Award » FEMS Meeting 2019". fems-microbiology.org.
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