The research conducted at LBE (Laboratoire de Biotechnologie de l'Environnement) in Narbonne aims to develop the concept of environmental biorefinery, which consists in treating the by-products of human activities (waste, agricultural residues, effluents) and valorizing them as resources of industrial interest (bioenergies, biomolecules, organic amendment), meanwhile minimizing their environmental and health impact. In this context, my research focus on the understanding of the rules governing microbial ecosystems at the heart of the functioning of these bioprocesses, in order to develop explanatory and predictive models for their control and optimization. Here I will present how microbial thermodynamics can be used:
-together with microbial transition state theory to predict microbial dynamics and functional community patterns
-to reveal extracellular electron transfer mediated parasitism
-to predict individual Operational Taxonomic Units (OTU) metabolism in mixed culture processes
I will also introduce few perspectives for the modelling of biotic interactions in microbial ecosystems (time-series analyses, individual based modelling...)