Project "PRELUDE"

The emergence of drug resistance is a major health problem that can thwart therapeutic control of a wide spectrum of diseases, from bacterial and viral infections to cancer. Drug resistance are regulated by multiple interacting quantitative trait loci (QTLs) as well as by novel mutations that evolve during the treatment process. Dissecting the genetic mechanisms underlying this phenotypic variation is a major challenge and this problematic apply to many human genetic diseases. Indeed, despite decades of genome wide association studies (GWAS), the genetic variants identified only explain a small fraction of the trait heritability, leaving the open question on whether accurate complex trait prediction can be achieved.

The PRELUDE project aims to understand how drug resistance arises and evolves using bacteria and yeast as genetic systems. To do so, the interdisciplinarity and the experimental and computational approaches using sequencing and large-scale genomic analysis make the project state-of-the-art, and will open endless possibilities in both the academic and the private sector.

• Gianni Liti, Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, INSERM, IRCAN, Nice, France
• Agnese Seminara, Université de Nice, Sophia Antipolis Nice Institute of Physics