Sylvain Darnet

Sylvain Darnet holds currently a position of Assistant Professor at the University of Lorraine (France). His research qualification and expertise cover the area of plant isoprenoid biology. In 2004, he received a PhD from the University of Strasbourg (France), working in the department of Pr. P. Benveniste, at the Institut de Biologie Moléculaire des Plantes (IBMP-CNRS). His major achievement was the characterization of two new oxidases involved in plant sterol biosynthesis, using an array of tools in biochemistry and functional genomics, like for instance virus-induced gene silencing. After that he moved to Brazil at the University Federal of Pará in Belém to develop several projects on bioactive natural products from the Amazonia. He set up a phytochemical lab at the Instituto de Ciências Biológicas of UFPA, contributed to the development of NGS and bioinformatics as a support for functional phytochemistry (on diverse plant species like pepper, ‘açai’ palm), and also in human genetics. During the period 2017-2020, Sylvain Darnet was co PI, with Hubert Schaller from the Plant Isoprenoid Biology team at the IBMP-CNRS in Strasbourg, of a cooperation program LIA UFPA-CNRS on terpene metabolism and thermal stress tolerance. In 2020, Sylvain Darnet was a senior postdoc on a H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship/reintegration panel, under the supervision of Hubert Schaller at the IBMP-CNRS. His research project was focused on the regulatory mechanisms at play in the biosynthesis and accumulation of phytosterols (‘High Phytosterol variants towards improved feedstocks and biofortification of crops’). Sylvain Darnet joined the redox regulation and stress response team in Nancy in 2021. His research is now centered on stress tolerance mechanisms of ligninolytic fungi, with a special focus on the role of RNA silencing and the importance of fungal isoprenoid biology for the adaptation to hostile environments.