THE STRASBOURG LABORATORY: TOWARDS THE NOBEL PRIZE (2011)

Abstract: We have seen previously that in the 1970s, some French researchers, often isolated, were working on the immunity of Invertebrates. At that time, it was not necessarily an appropriated idea: the major projects discussed and encouraged by the commissions of agencies in charge of research and evaluation of laboratories working on Invertebrates concerned rather embryology, physiology (especially endocrinology for Insects), genetics and ecology. Invertebrate immunology still had to prove its worth in order to emerge and to exist1. Chapter 5 gave a broad overview of the variety of work carried out in France in this field, on very different zoological groups. Research on grafts, which was certainly the most promising at the time, had not been pursued. Insects would, therefore, become the focus of attention in this field: this group has always attracted French biologists, the field of physiology having often been successfully addressed, such as endocrinology. It is precisely in a competent laboratory dealing with this question, the Zoological Laboratory in the Faculty of Sciences at Strasbourg University – that work on the immune response of Insects emerged, certainly also through their capacities to develop at the time biochemical techniques for protein isolation and purification. We will seek to understand how this research topic dealing with innate immunity gradually emerged in this laboratory, in order to constitute its only activity since 1990.