Romain Bridou received a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Sciences from Paul Sabatier University in France. He received a master’s degree in Environmental and Technical Sciences and a Ph.D. in Physiology and Biogeochemistry with honors from the University of Pau, France, in 2010. His Ph.D. dissertation was titled “Anaerobic Microbial Activities and Their Effects on the Transfer and Transformation of Metals and Organometals in the Environment: The Case of Tin and Mercury.” His research demonstrated demethylation of methylmercury by sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) and established a unique set of references for the natural isotopic fractionation of mercury during its methylation by SRB. After graduation, he was appointed as a postdoctoral fellow under the mentorship of Judy Wall at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and Dwayne Elias at ORNL. Bridou developed genetic tools for the mercury-methylating SRB Desulfovibrio desulfuricans ND132. As a result, he was part of the team that established that the two-gene cluster, hgcA and hgcB, is required for mercury methylation in seemingly all mercury-methylating organisms. This noteworthy finding was published in Science. Bridou also contributed to a research article, published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, that explored the special chemistry of the HgcA corrinoid center. He was recruited by the University of Pau, France, to fulfill a teaching and research position and is currently developing the genetics of bacterial model systems to study the transfer and transformation of metals at the subcellular level. He enjoys reading books, wood crafting, fishing, and “courir les bois” in the Pyrenees Mountains.
Posted: July 2015
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