To whom it may concern,

I am a PhD in Chemistry - Microbiology and Proteomics specialization since December 14, 2022. My professional aspiration is to become Associate Professor in the fields of microbiology and proteomics, so I am looking for professional experience, like post-doctoral contract, that will enable me to enrich my expertise and technique in these fields so that I can teach them afterwards.

During my PhD, I worked on the physiology of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in order to highlight potential new therapeutic approaches as alternatives to current strategies for better fighting this bacterial agent. To this end, I first sought to characterize the proteoforms of the major virulence factor LasB from P. aeruginosa by Middle-Down and Top-Down methods, constructing a mutant expressing a recombinant LasB protein that we tried to purify by affinity liquid chromatography; then I studied the periplasmic environment by nanoliquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (nanoLC-MS/MS) to complement the studies carried out in my host laboratory by my predecessors on intra- and extra-cellular bacterial environments, in order to track the dynamics of secreted protein PTMs from the intra- to the extra-cellular environment. Finally, I performed a relative quantitative proteomic study of the intra- and extra-cellular compartments of P. aeruginosa as a function of different carbon source supplementations in order to study their impact on the physiology of this bacterium. The proteomic hypotheses were then confirmed or not by phenotypic studies (growth monitoring, infection of eukaryotic cells and Caenorhabditis elegans...). During these projects, I discovered bioinformatics tools such as Proteome Discoverer, Progenesis and Agilent MassHunter, to study this large quantity of data. I enjoyed using these tools to filter and organize the data in order to extract trends and hypotheses to guide future experiments. I therefore attended a CNRS thematic school entitled “Quantitative proteomic analysis: choice of methods and data analysis”, thanks to one of the two grants offered by the Société Française de Protéomique for the participation of two PhD students, in order to receive basic training in certain proteomics software to study my data as efficiently as possible. Moreover, my multidisciplinary skills in microbiology, molecular biology, metabolomics and analytical chemistry enable me to consider a wide range of solutions from various fields to a given problem. I have worked only a little in cell biology (one experimental assay during my DUT, and a survival assay of A549 cells in the presence of P. aeruginosa during my PhD), but my professional experience demonstrates that I am capable of learning and adapting very quickly. For example, during my PhD, I had to analyse the rheology of my bacterial culture media supplemented with different carbon sources to adapt these media to the study of my bacteria's mobility; during my post-doctoral contract, I trained in metabolomics and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometry in less than a year. These challenges gave rise to highly productive discussions with colleagues, supervisors and experts from other laboratories to select the most effective solutions. This led to the setting up of collaborations, enabling me to train myself to be autonomous afterwards and pass on this expertise to my host laboratory.

I remain at your entire disposal should you have any questions,

Yours faithfully,

Salomé Sauvage