Francois-Xavier Weill

The classical biotype of Vibrio cholerae O1 was responsible for the first six cholera pandemics, but is relatively unknown, with only 20 genome sequences (50% of which come from the same geographic area) for […]

Cholera is thought by many to be a disease of the Victorian era. However, Yemen has recently experienced one of the largest ever cholera epidemics. The first cases were declared in September 2016, and […]

Little is known about the emergence and spread of the first antibiotic-resistant populations. It is believed, for example, that the very common penicillinase gene, blaTEM-1, discovered for the first time in E. coli in Greece […]

In 1970, ten years after the beginning of the 7th pandemic (Indonesia, 1961), cholera hit Africa, where it has remained entrenched. Three decades later, the reported incidence of indigenous cholera in sub-Saharan Africa was […]

The agent of epidemic dysentery, the bacterium Shigella dysenteriae type 1, was isolated in Japan in 1897 by Dr Kyoshi Shiga during a massive epidemic of bloody diarrhea that caused 20,000 deaths over a […]

The Unit includes two National Reference Centers (CNR) and a WHO Collaborating Center. Our interests are the population dynamics of bacterial enteric pathogens such Salmonella, Shigella/Escherichia coli and Vibrio, with a special focus on […]

CRISPR polymorphism is a powerful tool to subtype Salmonella strains and is now used in routine for epidemiological investigations. This tool gets a CRISPR profile by identifying the presence of known spacers and direct […]