About Camille
Camille Berthelot is a tenure-track group leader at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France and a senior scientist at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM). After completing her PhD in computational genomics at ENS in Paris in 2012, she pursued a postdoc in comparative functional genomics at EMBL-EBI in Cambridge on the evolution of gene regulation in mammals. She then joined INSERM as a tenured junior scientist in 2016, before starting her independent group at the Pasteur Institute in 2021 supported by an ERC Starting grant. Her recent achievements include the Jayle Prize from the French Academy of Sciences, a Consolidator award from the Fondation Schlumberger, and the ANR Tremplin grant.
Research
The Berthelot lab investigates how evolutionary innovations arise in vertebrate genomes through changes in gene sequences, gene expression and gene regulation. Our main model is the evolution of menstruation, a reproductive trait which was acquired during the evolution of primates, which we investigate by comparing primate uterus samples with a combination of single-cell functional assays, organoid models and computational analysis. We also develop bioinformatics models and frameworks to study how gene expression and regulation changes through time, and cellular models to test how evolutionary changes in gene function result in measurable molecular phenotypes. Finally, we are interested in how new evolutionary traits such as menstruation connect to disease, and study how menstrual fluid may be involved in the development of endometriosis.