In collaboration with her colleagues from the Microbiology laboratory at Ifremer, Soizick F. Le Guyader has been working on shellfish and in the field of coastal area contamination by human sewage for many years. Beside method development for viral detection and quantitation, the main research objectives are to understand how shellfish get contaminated, including sewage depuration efficiency, field study analysis, and outbreak investigations. Dr Le Guyader’s research projects mainly focus on norovirus, which is the main pathogen implicated in shellfish related outbreaks worldwide. After the demonstration that oysters are able to actively select some norovirus strains, via specific ligands detected in digestive tissues, her work now focus on metagenomic approach to describe viral diversity.
Dr Le Guyader is the head of the Microbiology laboratory at Ifremer and the head of the French Reference Laboratory for Shellfish Microbiology.