Mots-Clés

Multiomics DNA methylation Epigenomics Systems biology Post traumatism stress syndrome

Description

Every year, one million family members of intensive care unit (ICU) patients in France are at risk of developing a post-intensive care syndrome (PICS-family), a myriad of mental problems leading to functional impairments. A major component of PICS-family is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affecting one third of family members overall, >60% of bereaved families. The FAME (Improving FAMily members’ Experience in the ICU) project collected blood samples and 6 months clinical follow-up for 350 family members in a prospective, longitudinal and observational cohort. Family members were enrolled and their blood sample were collected within the first 3 days of the admission in ICU. They completed structured questionaries assessing PTSD symptoms three and six months after hospital discharge. Three omic levels have been characterized on these blood samples: transcriptomic (RNA-seq) mirnomic (miRNA-seq) and methylomic (whole genome EM-seq).

An M2 internship is proposed to focus on the epigenomic signatures derived from noncoding RNAs, and from DNA methylation analyses. We will take advantage of published and in house workflows to analyse the newly the generated FAME data (de Langen et al 2024 NAR Genom Bioinform and Zhou et al 2024 Nucleic Acids Res).

By integrating data on several epigenomic mechanisms, and their impact on the genome’s expression, the aim is to identify more comprehensively and reliably peripheral gene regulations predictive of a higher risk of developing PTSD. This work will be supervised by Dr Vijaykumar Muley and Pr Andrée Delahaye-Duriez at the NeuroDiderot laboratory in Paris. The work will be done with collaborators of the FAME project (ANR 21-RHUS-0009). The applicant will have the opportunity to gain a high level of competence in the highly demanded areas of systems biology and integrative genomics.