The Station Biologique de Roscoff (the SBR) is located along the Breton coast of the English channel (adress and maps).
The city of Roscoff is a friendly town with around 3500 inhabitants.
The SBR is currently staffed by 118 faculty members (15 associate professors and professors from UPMC, 34 permanent researchers from the CNRS and 69 technicians and engineers). This staff is currently distributed in 14 research teams from 3 research departments (UMR) as well as in several core services.
1/ The Research departments
2/ The Research capacities
3/ The SBR services
Altogether, as a fully equipped laboratory located next to the sea, the SBR provides a unique technical and scientific environment for those researchers who wish to apply modern approaches to the study of marine ecological or biological models.
1/ The Research Departments :
The three research departments (UMR) are:
- Marine plants and biomolecules (UMR 7139, Director Dr. Catherine Boyen);
- Adaptation and diversity in the marine environment (UMR 7144, Director, Prof. François Lallier);
- Marine models in cell biology, and medical applications (UMR 7150, Director, Dr. Serge Thomas).
The research programmes at the SBR involve a diversity of scientific domains, encompassing molecular, cellular, organismal, population and ecosystem biology, as well as a variety of technical approaches, including biophysics and chemistry. Experimental models cover a large range of marine organisms, including prokaryotic and eukaryotic phytoplankton, macro-algae and invertebrates, with research interests ranging from the cell cycle of sea urchin, the biochemistry and developmental biology of brown and red seaweeds, the ecophysiology of hydrothermal vents organisms, the chemistry of oceanic markers, the diversity of phytoplankton and zooplankton, and the population genetics and benthic ecology in the English Channel.
One particular programme is the development of a high throughput screening system based on sea-urchin cyclins, for the discovery of new drugs (Therapeutic screening and molecules, UPS 2682 , Director, Dr. Stéphane Bach).
2/ The Research capacities :
- a service for informatics and genomics, which operates a number of high throughputequipments and software for sequencing, transcriptomics, bioinformatics, proteomics and genotyping.
- a platform for protein expression and crystallogenesis, with fermenters of various sizes and a X-ray diffractometer with an image plate detector.
- a platform for advanced microscopy, with two electron microscopes (transmission and scanning). A new electron microscope for cryomicroscopy with will be installed in 2006.
3/ The SBR services :
In addition, the SBR features strong core services including:
- a hosting service (with 80 rooms and 2 studios)
- a documentation-edition-communication service, which runs a library with a focus on
marine sciences and which provides on-line access to all of the major journals in biological sciences.
- a service for the provision and maintenance of marine biological models, for both
internal and external users. This service operates a 12-m research vessel (N/O Mysis), which is used for up to one-day sampling trips in the coastal waters near Roscoff. It can also provide help from a team of scientific divers for under-water observations and experimentations.
Altogether, The ESTeam fellows will be exposed to the full breadth of marine biology, from genes to ecosystems, and involved in a number of scientific approaches, including biochemistry and chemistry, cell and molecular biology, genetics and genomics as well as to a number of technological approaches such as bioinformatics, transcriptomics, proteomics and structural genomics. They also will be given oppotunities to interact with a variety of scientists outside Roscoff, through the BR network of collaborations.
