Report 1  Introduction Date and conduct of visit:

The expert committee visited the Laboratory on February 10, 2012. The site visit was conducted by a team of scientists with expertise in the scientific research areas of the 2 teams being evaluated. The meeting started with a presentation of the AERES evaluation process and of the committee members, followed by a brief presentation of the unit project by the unit director. Subsequently, each of the two team leaders presented the past activities and future projects. Experts also met, in separate committees, with representatives of: 1) researchers with permanent positions, 2) PhD students and postdoctoral fellows, 3) engineers, and technicians and administrative assistants. The committee also met with representatives of the University and INRA. A final meeting was held with the director. The site visit ended with the closed-door meeting of the committee.

History and geographical location of the unit, and overall description of its field and activities:

The laboratory is located on the University de Lorraine campus in Vandoeuvre Les Nancy (Faculté des Sciences et Technologies -Campus Aiguillettes). This research unit "Génétique et Microbiologie»" UMR UL-INRA 1128 has been under the directorship of Mr Pierre LEBLOND for the past 4 years, and consisted of 2 teams. The Unit is associated to INRA since 1995, but only hosts a limited number of INRA personal (1 single INRA researcher joined in 2006, and the single INRA technician left in 2007 and was not replaced). The scientific scopes of the research in the UMR deal with Gram-positive bacteria, focusing on two major bacterial groups, Streptococcus and Streptomyces. It is based on approaches that include molecular genetics, biochemistry, genomics and bioinformatics. The studied microorganisms are often model organisms of interest for fundamental research as well as for applications in food industry, health, and biotechnology.

Management team:

The unit directed by Pierre LEBLOND, Professor at UL, is organized in two teams: Team 1 is led by Ms Sophie PAYOT-LACROIX and Team 2 by Mr Pierre LEBLOND. This is a rather small unit and there is no other pyramidal organisation.

Unit workforce: 2  Assessment of the unit Overall opinion on the unit:

Globally, the research carried out at the Unit can be qualified as good, especially taking into consideration the high teaching load of the staff. The Unit is clearly visible in the French research landscape in their corresponding fields of expertise. However, the committee noticed some heterogeneity in the performances of the two teams, though the quality and originality of their research were at international standard. This was in part due to the rather large number of different topics studied during the last term. The two teams have initiated to focus their research on a limited number of topics and to integrate these in the broader context of the research priorities of INRA departments MICA and EFPA The heterogeneity is particularly visible at the level of funding, as Team 1 only got limited funding during the last term (mostly from region Lorraine, University and INRA calls), furthermore, both teams have currently no ANR or EC funding. The proposed adjustments and reorientation (see above), might facilitate the Unit to access external funding, but the perimeters of the collaborative effort with the partner INRA labs will need to be precisely defined, especially for Team 1. Teaching is consuming a large part of the time of the unit personnel, but it should be mentioned that they have been very active and productive in this field; they have, for instance, set up a new master course in Microbiology for the UL.

Strengths and opportunities:

An evident strength is the relative youth of the staff members, which suggests that the backbone of the Unit will be stable, at least at medium term, allowing for the planning of projects on the long run. This Unit provides a concrete example of a valuable association between INRA and University to provide excellence in teaching, very good research and training of PhD students. During the last period, they trained 6 PhD students who found a position or became postdocs in foreign labs, and produced 23 publications in journals with good to high visibility. The different teams have been able to tie excellent national and international collaborations, giving them access to cutting-edge technologies and/or knowledge. They are already very well integrated in the Région Lorraine research and academic community, and the current fusion of the 4 regional universities into a single one potentially offers a better visibility of the Unit, and will likely offer access to additional core facilities.

Weaknesses and risks:

The major threat lies in the current limited external funding, especially in a context where all but one person are heavily involved in teaching. There are only 2 to 4 full time equivalents on each of the two projects and external funding should cover the salary of one full time post doc in each team, to guarantee the pace of project development and face competition. The second threat deals mostly with the fact that the Team 1 project is partly dependent on the data produced in an INRA team from Jouy en Josas, thus their interactions need to be more precisely defined. The committee did notice that there had been a real effort of reorganization in the projects presented, with the abandoning of certain projects and re-focusing on certain others; nevertheless, the risk of non-competitiveness in a few projects is real, especially with the start of new projects from little preliminary evidence (e.g. no demonstrated link between the presence of integrative conjugative elements (ICEs) and the pathogenicity of S. salivarius). As mentioned earlier, one general but common problem for staff-members at universities results from the heavy teaching load awhile there is a single full time researcher, hence, the recruitment of another full time researcher should be sought.

Recommendations:

The reorganisation proposed for the next term is certainly a good decision, as both teams will focus on fewer projects, centred on their established strengths, ICE and HGT in Streptococci, and genome plasticity and secondary metabolite production in Streptomyces. Parts of the Team 1 project should be better defined and work should be processive, starting by establishing the phenotype brought by the integrative and conjugative elements (ICEs), prior performing complex multispecies biofilm experiments. To reach their planned research-goals, Team 2 needs to strengthen the collaboration with researchers from other disciplines. The director is facing an important challenge with the current limited external funding, and securing funding should be his priority. The support of INRA to the unit is so far limited to a single permanent scientist; this is too little to expect a higher visibility. This is particularly important, as all the other people in the unit are university staff or graduate students who do not work full time on these competitive projects due to their teaching loads.

 Detailed assessments:

Assessment of scientific quality and production:

The team leaders are recognized experts in their fields. All together they published 23 publications in journal of good to high visibility (60% in top quartile), which is good for a unit with only 4.4 EFT on average over the evaluated period. They trained 8 PhDs and 6 are currently ongoing.

Assessment of the unit's integration into its environment:

They have excellent relationships with the university authorities (recently, they obtained the creation of a full professorship in the unit), and the INRA local correspondents support them. Despite the present lack of external financial support, reasonable external funding (EC and ANR) was secured during the evaluated period. The work they made on stambomycin production has led to a European patent.

Assessment of the research unit's reputation and drawing power:

They have been able to obtain two researchers on university assistant professor positions (2009 and 2010) and a promotion from assistant professor to professor They attracted and funded a good number of students for PhD and postdocs. They are well integrated in the different national networks in their fields, and have established appropriate collaborations with very good European labs, when necessary for their projects. One PhD student obtained the very competitive "Young researcher contract" from INRA.

Assessment of the unit's governance and life:

The Unit is rather small and the different types of personnel are satisfied with its functioning. All but one person are heavily involved in teaching, where they are very active. They are also collaborating with other INRA labs, locally and at the national level.

Assessment of the strategy and 5-year project:

The projects from both teams are focused on a limited number of questions, and the objectives should be attainable at medium term, so long as they will receive decent funding to support them. The project of Team 1 is rather linear and is in direct line with their past work, but, it will be applied to related Streptococcus species belonging to a different niche. Some new aspects planned by Team 2 are more risky, but the proposed approaches sound reasonable and likely more rewarding as the project deals with unanswered basic questions of Streptomyces, and one continued aspect has a good potential in terms of drug development

Assessment of the unit's involvement in training:

The major strength of the Unit is that their members are involved in teaching, from L1 to M2, and Master Pro, and they are very active in adjusting the proposed formations to the recent development in biology, and they have implemented novel teaching modules (i.e. bioinformatics and bioanalysis). They also created a Master in Microbiology with dual specialties (biotech and health). This additions should provoke to attract excellent students from UL. The doctoral students are fully integrated in the research projects and teaching obligations of the Unit, and are very satisfied with all aspects of the unit functioning. Former students either got positions in biotech companies, academic areas (researcher and engineers), or postdoc abroad.

Assessment of scientific quality and production:

The team has a long-standing record in the study of integrative and conjugative elements (ICEs) in Grampositive bacteria, and continued to exploit their "niche" of expertise by the further characterization of ICEs of streptococci. Particularly significant scientific findings are: 1) the demonstration of the ability of these elements to transfer by conjugation, 2) the discovery of more ICEs and related defective elements (CIMEs and IMEs) using bioinformatics methods to explore streptococci genomes and their evolution through horizontal gene transfer and 3) the demonstration that the tandem integration of CIMes and ICEs leads to the formation of new conjugative ICEs. During the past term they also brought to an end the studies they ran on the adaptive transcriptional regulators encoded by rgg genes and published these results.

Past production is good. They have published 14 papers in highly reputable microbiological journals, including J. Bacteriol., Mol. Microbiol., Appl. Environ. Microbiol. This is an acceptable level of publications, especially given the high level of teaching duties of most of the unit members.

Assessment of the research team's integration into its environment:

The research results are correctly valorised at the national level, by the participation in national networks and organization of scientific meetings, in teaching and communication with a larger public. Despite the existence of a reasonable number of national and international collaborations, the team seems however to have difficulties to ensure funding from other sources than Region Lorraine and intra INRA programs.. According to the report presented to the Evaluation Committee, the team largely relied on funding secured by Team 2 during part of the present evaluation term. Hence, this team should make an effort to attend more international meetings and secure more international collaborations. They have to dedicate more efforts to secure external financing by exploring both academic and industrial support.

Assessment of the research team's reputation and drawing power:

One member of the team was invited to give a talk at an international conference. Three PhD degrees have been awarded over this term, two of which were to students who originated from other French Universities. 3 PhD students are in the team rigth now, two of whom come from other French Universities. The team continues a collaboration with a British lab which provide an expertise in bacterial community present in the oral cavity.

Assessment of the strategy and 5-year project:

The project aims at integrating the team's research in the frame of an existing program at INRA (Biodiversity, evolution and pathogenicity, MICA department). By providing their know-how on ICE mining and analysis, the team is indeed in a good position to contribute an additional and original dimension to projects addressing the role of gene transfer in the transition from commensalism to pathogenicity in streptococcal oral species, in particular S. salivarius. Although the team should secure a local anchorage (presently envisaged as additional metagenomic analysis of strains isolated in French hospitals), in view of the small size of the team and its limited financial resources, it would appear appropriate to focus the project on exploiting the results and data accessible from ongoing high throughput sequencing efforts. Collaboration with the INRA MICALIS and GMPA teams should provide sufficiently large data sets to allow for the type of analysis envisaged (in silico mining for ICEs, CIMEs and IMEs in Streptococci of interest, building of a dedicated database and analysis of the spectrum of conjugative transfer in environments of increasing complexity). The rationale for focusing on ICE from S. salivarius is obvious, given the expertise of this team on the closely related species S. thermophilus. However, the collaboration on this subject between this team and that of Jouy-en-Josas was not clearly presented.

Conclusion:  Overall opinion on the team:

The team is small, headed by a full time researcher but other team members are heavily involved in teaching and other educational tasks. The scientific production over the past 5 years was good (considering the small amount of financing available to the group) and with an involvement in national scientific activities, which is providing the scientists and the students with enough opportunities to interact with the scientific community.

 Strengths and opportunities

Strength is the excellent social atmosphere in the group. Students appreciate the equilibrium provided between freedom, strong advice and scientific discussion. Through ten years the team members have developed a specific know-how that should provide ample opportunity for productive collaborations and integration in ongoing large scale metagenomic projects. Given their expertise on ICE from S. thermophilus, this team should be rapidly productive on their new model organism S. salivarius.

 Weaknesses and risks:

The main weaknesses are the small size of the team and a lack of sufficient international visibility aside from the publications. As a result, the team has had great difficulty raising funding from the competitive ANR and EC programs, in recent years. This could clearly represent a middle term risk of failing to sustain the group, among a predictable growing competition.

 Recommendations:

Favour participation to international rather than national scientific events. Focus the project to elaborate a niche in large collaborative projects so as to thrive against competition. This should also contribute to securing external funding (which should be an absolute priority). Delineate precisely their contribution to the human oral microbiota project developed in Jouy-en-Josas.

Assessment of scientific quality and production:

For the period 2008-12, the research carried out by Team 2 of the unit has led to continued progress, especially considering the relatively small size of the group and the high teaching commitments of the staff. The Team exploited the genome sequence of Streptomyces ambofaciens to (a) develop novel genome mining tools to support research of gene-regulation; (b) deepen the general knowledge about the architecture and plasticity of the Streptomyces chromosome; and (c) exploit the potential of 'cryptic' antibiotic biosynthetic gene clusters to direct production of both known and novel bioactive compounds of potential medical use. These advances have been reported in several publications in journals of good to high impact and have led to the filing of a patent. All members of the team have made valuable contributions to these.

Assessment of the research team's integration into its environment, its reputation and drawing power:

During the evaluated period, the team has improved its position and standing in relation to international research on Streptomyces. This has been accomplished by attracting a good level of international/national funding and establishing and/or maintaining fruitful national and international scientific collaborations. Members of the Team gave invited talks and presentations at several of the most important international conferences in the field, as well as at different national meetings. Recruitment of young scientists (PhDs and postdocs) is good. The advances and infrastructure achieved within the period have provided an excellent environment for training young scientists (PhD's) and the record for completion of doctoral theses and subsequent employment of these scientists is very good.

The discovery of stambomycin, a potential high-value bioactive product of a 'cryptic' biosynthetic pathway, reported in PNAS by the team, was an important landmark in the area of Streptomyces research and drug discovery. This could/should have provided a springboard for the team to attract significant new external funding. However, as yet, the team's funding applications to exploit this advance have been unsuccessful.

Assessment of the strategy and 5-year project:

The 5-year plan is original and ambitious, designed to build on the advances and strengths of the team in 'chemical biology' allied to 'genome mining'. The planned strategy is to expand from the "Petri-dish" genomics to the soil ecosystem to align the team with INRA priorities, and to initiate collaborations with researchers from other disciplines, as well as with other INRA-funded projects in the local region; together with additional results, funding should be feasible The relevance and feasibility of short-to medium-term plans of several aspects are strong and there is good evidence that these investigations will lead to publications in leading scientific journals and the potential for new drug discovery. There is an element of risk-taking in that the medium-to long-term strategy is very dependent on good access to the expertise of collaborating chemists and joint studies with other disciplines (i.e. soilsciences, forestry). Hopefully existing and novel collaborations will provide additional expertise, as the chemical biology of microbial signalling and secondary metabolite production is an increasingly competitive area, led by US groups exploiting in-house state-of-the-art mass spectrometry techniques.

Conclusion:  Overall opinion on the team:

The team is small and each of its members is involved in teaching and other educational tasks. The scientific production over the past 5 years was very good, and the group has established appropriate external collaborations, both at national and European level, to achieve the highest possible benefit from their work. They have centred their projects on what are the strengths. The proposed project builds on the success of the previous period but extends to complementary dimensions, and has an interdisciplinarity outlook by engaging in new collaborations.

 Strengths and opportunities:

The good international standing of the team and its collaborative national and international links, based on competent scientific activities leading to high-impact outputs, are strengths to build upon and enhance the future recruitment of talented researchers. The expertise the team has developed, based primarily on genome-guided analysis of the biology of a single Streptomyces species grown in lab conditions, provides a good platform (although constrained by the a lack of multi-disciplinarity within the team) for the proposed plans of the next 5 years.

 Weaknesses and risks:

The self-evaluation alludes to areas of weakness impacting on research potential, namely the small size of the team, their commitment to teaching, and their relative geographical isolation making recruitment of staff a problem. To this, it should be added that the team is currently comprised of scientists with closely related skill sets.

 Recommendations:

While lack of different expertise in the group can be offset to a certain extent by collaboration with other groups, the team is encouraged to actively engage to raise funds to hire PhD(s)/ postdoc(s) with complementary skills. One very helpful strategy that should be entertained by INRA is to allocate a full-time technician to support the continuation of experimental work of the researchers while the motivated staff-members are engaged in teaching. This should lead to enhance the future success of the team and provide an improved environment for the training of young scientists. 1. Un projet "Forêt Bois Territoires" avec comme 3 ème partenaire AgroParisTech-Nancy. Si on y rajoute des équipes propres de l'INRA, des UMR INRA-AgroParisTech, et une unité de l'UL (le LERMAB sur le Bois Matériau, qui sera sans doute labellisée par l'INRA lors du prochain contrat), ces unités couvrent l'ensemble des compétences nécessaires pour aborder les questions qui se posent pour l'avenir de la filière forêt-bois: adaptation des forêts aux changements climatiques et de gestion, ajustements de la production aux besoins croissants, en bois matériau et en bois pour l'énergie, vulnérabilité et résilience aux contraintes de l'environnement, économie de la filière, identification et évaluation des services écosystémiques, etc. Ces questions requièrent la mobilisation d'une large gamme de disciplines. Cette forte complémentarité entre unités et cette participation à un projet collectif font la force de ce domaine de recherche en Lorraine, et ont permis la construction et le succès du projet de Labex "ARBRE" retenu lors du second appel à projets des PAI en février 2012 (lors des visites des comités).

2. Un axe de recherches sur l'"Ingénierie et Sécurité des Aliments" qui regroupe également un nombre important d'unités sur des thématiques d'importance pour plusieurs départements de l'INRA.

Certaines des unités comme le LGM (Dynamic) ou le LAE contribuent aux deux axes de recherches. Les autres sont plus spécifiquement actives dans l'un des deux. Les avis de l'AERES et les réponses apportées par les directions des unités feront l'objet de présentation et de réactions des départements de recherche impliqués : "Ecologie des Forêts, Prairies et Milieux Aquatiques", "Microbiologie et Chaine Alimentaire", Environnement et Agronomie", "Physiologie Animale et Santé des Elevages", "Alimentation humaine" qui sont les tutelles scientifiques INRA pour ces unités, et qui se prononceront sur les aspects de stratégie scientifique. La réponse présentée ici s'attache plus spécifiquement aux dynamiques locales entre unités. Les commissions de visite ont perçu ces enjeux et ont souligné les contributions des unités au projet collectif. De plus, les avis portés sur les différentes unités sont dans l'ensemble très positifs et nous ne pouvons que nous en féliciter.

Eléments concernant l'UMR 1128 « Laboratoire de Génétique Microbienne » Cette unité deviendra "Dynamique des Génomes et Adaptation Microbienne-DynAMic)". La commission souligne la pertinence des choix scientifiques fait par cette petite unité et son dynamisme mais également le problème de masse critique dans chacune des deux équipes. Pour compenser partiellement cette faible masse critique est à rechercher dans le cadre dune coopération opérationnelle avec l'UMR IAM (sols forestiers) et sans doute également l'URAFPA. L'INRA appuie également via des moyens sous forme de bourses de thèses. Enfin, cette UMR peut s'appuyer sur les plateaux techniques existants, en particulier celui d'Ecogénomique.

VOLET GENERAL

We would like to thank the AERES committee for the very good scientific and human atmosphere established between the committee and the laboratory members during the visit of our Unit. We are grateful to our committee composed of international research leaders for their positive evaluation of our scientific and teaching achievements, and for their support to apply for new permanent positions (INRA, Univ. Lorraine) to comfort our group and increase the visibility of our work.

We thank the AERES committee for their recommendations to both teams of the unit but we would also like to clarify several points:

The positioning of the project of team 1 was questioned by the committee. The ambition is to capitalize our expertise on integrative and conjugative elements and related elements in streptococci to study gene transfers in the ecosystem, not only in the Petri dish. The "host bacteria" chosen is S. salivarius, as this species is present in two environments (oral and digestive) and includes commensal and pathogenic strains. Our project is being developed in coherence with the scientific theme 'From biodiversity to evolution and pathogenicity' of the INRA department 'Microbiology and the Food Chain' (MICA) to whom our team depends and in agreement with its Department Chief. To initiate our project, we will bring our expertise on ICE and mobilizable elements to explore the diversity of these elements within oral and digestive metagenomic data provided by collaborating teams including the MICALIS unit. Our contribution will thus be complementary to their work. This positioning will offer us new funding opportunities through the development of a collaboration network.

The lack of multidisciplinarity of team 2 was considered at risk. In the previous term, our strategy which proved to be efficient (collaborative funding and publications) was to develop synergies with soil ecologists and structural chemists. We will further complement our skills

N6:*

  Engineers, technicians and administrative staff * on a permanent position 2,5 (1,27) 2,5 (1,27) N5: Engineers, technicians and administrative staff * on a non-permanent position 0 Postdoctoral students having spent at least 12 months in the unit 0 N7: Doctoral students 5 (2,98) N8: PhD defended 2 N9: Number of Habilitations to Direct Research (HDR) defended 1 N10: People habilitated to direct research or similar 4 If different, indicate corresponding FTEs in brackets. ** Number of producers in the 2008-2011 period who will be present in 2013-2017.

N6:N7N10:

  Engineers, technicians and administrative staff * on a permanent position 2,5 (0,87) 2,5 (0,87) N5: Engineers, technicians and administrative staff * on a non-permanent position 0 Postdoctoral students having spent at least 12 months in the unit 1 Number of Habilitations to Direct Research (HDR) defended 1 People habilitated to direct research or similar 2 Number of producers in the 2008-2011 period who will be present in 2013-2017.

  34, COURS LEOPOLD -CS 25233 54052 NANCY CEDEX EMAIL@UNIV-LORRAINE.FR WWW.UNIV-LORRAINE.FR Observations de E. Dreyer, Directeur du Centre INRA de Nancy Réponse générale Les unités soutenues par l'INRA en Lorraine (qui emploie 200 permanents et 100 contractuels) participent activement aux deux axes de recherche du pôle Agronomie, AgroAlimentaire, Forêts (A2F) de l'Université de Lorraine:

  Génétique & Microbiologie UMR INRA-UHP 1128 Université de Lorraine IFR 110 -Faculté des Sciences et Technologies Boulevard des Aiguillettes BP 70239 F-54506 Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy

  (molecular genetics) by the development of relevant collaborations, and amongst others, with INRA soil ecologists in order to fit with INRA priorities with the perspective to seal a partnership with the 'Forests, grasslands, aquatic environments' (EFPA) INRA dept. Nancy, le 30 mars 2012 Pr. Pierre Leblond Génétique & Microbiologie UMR INRA 1128 Université de Lorraine

6 

 6 Statistics per field

	Notes
		C1	C2	C3	C4
	Critères	Qualité scientifique et production	Rayonnement et attractivité, intégration dans l'environnement	Gouvernance et vie du laboratoire	Stratégie et projet scientifique
	A+	10	14	18	16
	A	33	32	31	29
	B	13	10	6	11
	C	1	1	2	1
	Non noté	-	-	-	-
	Pourcentages
		C1	C2	C3	C4
	Critères	Qualité scientifique et production	Rayonnement et attractivité, intégration dans l'environnement	Gouvernance et vie du laboratoire	Stratégie et projet scientifique
	A+	18%	25%	32%	28%
	A	58%	56%	54%	51%
	B	23%	18%	11%	19%
	C	2%	2%	4%	2%
	Non noté	-	-	-	-

Once the visits for the 2011-2012 evaluation campaign had been completed, the chairpersons of the expert committees, who met per disciplinary group, proceeded to attribute a score to the research units in their group (and, when necessary, for these units' in-house teams).

This score (A+, A, B, C) concerned each of the four criteria defined by the AERES and was given along with an overall assessment.

With respect to this score, the research unit concerned by this report and its in-house teams received the overall assessment and the following grades:

Overall assessment of the unit Laboratoire de Génétique et Microbiologie (LGM) :

Unité dont la production, le rayonnement, l'organisation, l'animation et le projet sont très bons.

Grading table:

C1

Scientific quality and production.

C2

Reputation and drawing power, integration into the environment.

C3

Laboratory life and governance.

C4

Strategy and scientific project.

A A A A

Overall assessment of the team LEBLOND-PAYOT-LACROIX :

Équipe dont la production est très bonne. Le rayonnement et le projet sont bons mais pourraient être améliorés.

Grading table:

C1

Scientific quality and production.

C2

Reputation and drawing power, integration into the environment.

C3

Laboratory life and governance.

C4

Strategy and scientific project.

A B -B

Overall assessment of the team LEBLOND-LEBLOND :

Équipe dont la production, le rayonnement et le projet sont très bons.

Grading table:

C1

Scientific quality and production.

C2

Reputation and drawing power, integration into the environment.

C3

Laboratory life and governance.

C4

Strategy and scientific project.

A A -A


Grading

Once the visits for the 2012-2013 evaluation campaign had been completed, the chairpersons of the expert committees, who met per disciplinary group, proceeded to attribute a score to the research units in their group (and, when necessary, for these units' in-house teams). This score (A+, A, B, C) concerned each of the six criteria defined by the AERES. NN (not-scored) attached to a criteria indicate that this one was not applicable to the particular case of this research unit or this team.

Criterion 1 -C1: Scientific outputs and quality ; Criterion 2 -C2: Academic reputation and appeal ; Criterion 3 -C3: Interactions with the social, economic and cultural environment ; Criterion 4 -C4: Organisation and life of the institution (or of the team) ; Criterion 5 -C5: Involvement in training through research ; Criterion 6 -C6: Strategy and five-year plan.

C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 A A A+ A A A 1  Introduction
History and geographical location of the unit

The Channel North Sea Fisheries unit (Unité Halieutique Manche Mer du Nord, HMMN) belongs to the Department of Biological Resources and Environment of IFREMER. Together with 4 other Fisheries units, the HMMN unit was created in 2005 following the subdivision according to regional maritime areas of a former national Fisheries Department. The HMMN unit's mission combines public service tasks -the monitoring and the assessment of fisheries resources and French fishing fleets -together with research in fisheries science and, more generally, marine ecology.

The HMMN unit consists of two laboratories located in two different geographical areas: the Fisheries Resources Laboratory of Boulogne-sur-mer (Laboratoire Ressources Halieutiques de Boulogne sur mer, LRHBL, Nord-Pas de Calais) and the Fisheries Ressources Laboratory of Port-en-Bessin (Laboratoire Ressources Halieutiques de Port-en-Bessin, LRHPB, Basse-Normandie). These are part of a network of 11 Fisheries Laboratories/units distributed along the French coastline (including the French Overseas Departments and Territories) on which rely the Fisheries Information System (Système d'Information Halieutique), which is in charge of monitoring fisheries resources and their uses, and the National Fisheries Evaluation Group from IFREMER, which is in charge of fisheries assessment. Regarding public service tasks, the HMMN unit is in charge of a geographical zone extending from the maritime district of Dunkerque to that of Cherbourg in terms of fishing ports, and from the English Channel to the North Sea in terms of fishing areas.

Management team

The management team is composed of the head of the HMMN unit, the heads of the two laboratories and a personal assistant. In addition, a research scientist located at the LRHBL (Mr Bruno ERNANDE) is in charge of scientific coordination.

Independently of the geographical location, the HMMN unit is structured along 2, interconnected, themes: Fisheries dynamics (Dynamique des pêcheries) and Fish ecology (Ecologie halieutique). In terms of upstream monitoring, besides the data collection on land and at sea dictated by public policies (e.g. the Data Collection Framework of the Common Fisheries Policy), the HMMN unit created three technical platforms dedicated to observation in Boulogne-sur-mer: a National Centre of Sclerochronology (pôle Sclérochronologie), a National Centre of Zooplankton taxonomy (pôle Zooplancton) and a technical platform devoted to marine food webs (plateforme réseaux trophiques). The National Centre of Zooplankton taxonomy is shared with another IFREMER unit (Aquaculture Resources and Environment unit, unité des Laboratoires Environnement Ressources, LER unit), the HMMN unit being in charge of the aspects related to the ichthyoplankton. Advising activities are shared between the 2 themes according to the scientific expertise required. The scientific management of the unit relies on a team composed of 1 contact person per technical platform, 2 contact persons per theme, and 1 contact person specifically dedicated to advice related to marine aggregate extractions and marine renewable energies. 2  Assessment of the unit

Unit workforce

Strengths and opportunities

The unit has over the past period shown a strong development both in the progress of implementing a programme of data collection, advice and research activities and in developing a vision on future developments. The science plan for the coming period emulates a robust understanding of important (policy) themes and linkages with the science requirements for the further development, implementation and monitoring of policy.

Being located in the middle of an important Eco-region (between the Channel and North Sea) provides ample strength, both for developing science and for international cooperation. This also makes the work of the unit highly relevant in both the policy arena and the field of monitoring and advice. In this, the unit demonstrates a strong understanding of the link between relevant (policy) questions, advice and scientific work.

In particular the unit has developed a leadership position in the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management discourse which is a good basis for further (inter)national collaboration. An opportunity the unit may utilise is the further increase in cooperation at the National level with other Joint Research units.

The otoliths and plankton lines have developed technical tools and data which can be utilised in further scientific development. The examples of how knowledge generated in the unit was utilised to produce communication material (books, DVD) was considered to be a great strength and opportunity for future action.

The unit has a good knowledge of the local fisheries practices, environment and socio-economic context. This knowledge is increasingly expanded into other areas of marine activities.

Weaknesses and threats

Whereas the integration of data collection, and of advice together with science can be very stimulating by creating several cross breeding opportunities it also holds a threat. Firstly the three types of activities all come with a separate dynamic of demands and requirements. Work for any of the three activities can be affected by calls from the other, hence competing, tasks.

The amount and composition type of the available workforce can be a concern; f.e. availability of technicians across the different fields of work. In addition, especially within a relatively small research group there is an eminent risk of loosing important personnel especially scientists carrying the lead in specific themes. This can immediately influence the strength of the specific themes and hence affect the implementation of scientific projects.

In addition to this the AERES review panel identified an insufficient administrative support to the team with respect to setting up (European) projects. This concerns both capacity and expertise.

Continuity and institutional memory in the unit, especially in the field of advice on the local and regional scale, remains a challenge. In addition the setting and follow up of time series of data, for example in the line of sclerochronology, is a concern. Also the sustainability and visibility of the technical platforms is tied to the type of research for which it is used: this relation should be safeguarded. The AERES review committee agrees with the concern expressed relatively to the sustainability of at-sea time series of survey cruises in the specific areas of research.

The fact that the unit is split over two geographical locations at a considerable distance of each other can be perceived as both a weakness and a threat to the continuity of the unit. Although many efforts are undertaken to promote interactions between the two sites (such as attending the 'scientific coffee' via video conference link) face to face interactions, which are deemed necessary for a continued well-functioning of the unit, remain limited as a result of the bi-location of the unit.

Recommendations

The growth and development experienced by the unit during the past period should be consolidated. This has to include the anticipation of changes in personnel. On the one hand, growth of the scope of programmes will bear on the necessary availability of resources. On the other hand this will require for the arrangement for the transmission of knowledge between the workers.

Caution should be taken relatively to the number and size of programmes planned. It is recommended not to over-estimate the capacity and possibilities of implementation of programmes in the unit. Overselling the unit can back-fire when being granted a large portion of work. Growth of the unit's workload should keep in pace with the development of the unit's expertise and implementation capacity. In addition, running after the next project today to keep up funding of research lines tomorrow can hinder utilising to its fullest the results of the current set of projects at hand.

It is recommended to consider the development of support to the team in terms of administrative support for further development of (European) projects, both in terms of capacity and expertise.

Scientific exploitation and dissemination of research results should be enhanced. Use of all available data including old data sets should be further explored. We stress that although due to lack of (storage) capacity old research data and material are discarded after a certain amount of time, this does hinder the building up of appropriate time series that could facilitate further research (for instance with respect to the otolith analysis).

Finally it is recommended that, resources providing, the number of students, PhDs and post docs is increased.

 Detailed assessments

Overall the assessment committee finds the progress of the unit made over the past 5 years very impressive in both the devolpment of the themes, the implementation of the work and the scientific production.

Assessment of scientific quality and outputs

• In general the scientific quality of the work and the output is perceived as very convincing. There is a proper mix of publications, presentations and peer reviewed articles. Publication numbers are growing impressively.

Over the review period the unit has produced 42 peer reviewed articles and 9 books/chapters. The bulk of this scientific production lies in providing input to conferences (82 papers, presentations, posters) and reports (71).

• The unit's emphasis consists of applied science. Applied science (data collection and advice) and the production of scientific analyses are well integrated. However a general concern remains the fine balance between the three strands of work: data collection, advice and scientific research.

• The integration of multidiscplinary approaches to research themes is very impressive. The unit has been in the forefront of taking up data sampling and advice practices to become the solid basis of scientific analysis.

• In the themes taken up and further developed by the unit, the unit reaches the standards of other leading institutions in Europe. The unit is at the front edge of developing an integrated ecosystem approach to fisheries management definitely in France and at the general level of development in Europe.

• The unit's expertise is at the required level of the main peer institutes in Europe. Some of the unit members are very active in producing (peer reviewed) publications. All staff members (scientists, researchers and technical assistants) are involved and contribute to the expertise increase and are involved in the scientific production.

Assessment of the unit's academic reputation and appeal

• HMMR is a fairly newly established unit in the scientific field. It has great potential to develop into a significant centre. This can be achieved by building up stability in staff numbers and building up a scientific track record.

•

The unit is a growing entity both in size and in reputation despite the fact Boulogne-sur-mer is not in general perceived as a very conducive place to live with respect to research. Hence the themes chosen and the way chosen to implement them do have appeal to the science community.

•

In each of the relative fields the unit and its individual scientists have built up a reputation.

•

The production of out-reach material greatly contributes to the visibility and appeal of the unit.

Assessment of the unit's interaction with the social, economic and cultural environment

• The unit with respect to the relevant production units is adequately linked to both a social, economic and cultural surrounding. The centre of Port-en-Bessin is especially nicely embedded in the local community.

•

The social and economic interactions with the local community are closely incorporated in the scientific work.

•

The unit puts in effort to appropriately communicate with the wider social-economic environment.

• With a total number of 53 expert advice pieces given to the local communities and to the local, regional and national authorities over the 2008-2012 period, the unit clearly has a distinct role and is evidently interacting with the social, economic and cultural environment.

• At the international level the unit is clearly embedded in the relevant scientific, social and economic advisory fora. With a total of 158 missions over the 2008-2012 period, and on average 34.5 missions per (full) year to such institutions as ICES, STECF, FAO, CGMP and RAC and relevant scientific working groups, the unit plays a noteworthy role in the European and international scientific and policy arena.

Assessment of the unit's organisation and life

•

The fact that the unit very much operates as a single integrated and motivated team shows that the unit's organisation is well on track. There is a very good relationship and communication between technicians and scientists.

• However, there seem to be mixed feelings about the integration over the two geographical locations and the developments of the two entities.

Assessment of the unit's involvement in training through research • There is a will to increase the number of students, however there are limits to fund master students. With the increase in number of qualified people (HDR) more PhDs can be accommodated.

•

Although not the principal objective researchers are involved in teaching activities elsewhere.

Assessment of the five-year plan and strategy

• A very nicely and cleverly thought-through plan. The plan is both convincing and having a high level of ambition.

• Within the plan the several strands of research, united into three themes, are nicely incorporated.

• Noting the level of funding and the amount of available human resources the ease of implementation can be queried. The plan is feasible if implemented with the current set of available resources and foreplanned developments. Hence the implementation will for a large extent hinge on the premises of resources being made available.

Unit workforce Number as at 30/06/2012 Number as at 01/01/2014 2014-2018 Number of project producers N1: Permanent professors and similar positions

  PhD students were supervised by scientists of the unit, among which 2 were co-supervised together with foreign institutions: 1 with Exeter University in the UK and the other 1 with CSIRO (The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) in Australia. The unit also hosted 9 post-doctoral researchers.

	N2: Permanent researchers from Institutions and similar positions	14	14	14
	N3: Other permanent staff (without research duties)	15	16	3
	N4: Other professors (Emeritus Professor, on-contract Professor, etc.)
	N5: Other researchers from Institutions (Emeritus Research Director, Postdoctoral students, visitors, etc.)	2	2	2
	N6: Other contractual staff (without research duties)	3	5	0
	TOTAL N1 to N6	34	37	19
	Percentage of producers		100 %
	Although education in not part of IFREMER's official mission, the HMMN unit has been involved in education
	activities, mostly through research training. From 2008 to 2011, scientists of the HMMN unit supervised 7 first-year
	Master students, 16 second-year Master students, 4 last-year engineer students and 5 undergraduate students.
	Moreover, 8 Unit

workforce Number as at 30/06/2012 Number as at 01/01/2014

	Doctoral students	3
	Theses defended	4
	Postdoctoral students having spent at least 12 months in the unit*	2
	Number of Research Supervisor Qualifications (HDR) taken	2
	Qualified research supervisors (with an HDR) or similar positions	2

•

  From 2008 to 2011, scientists of the HMMN Unit supervised 7 first-year Master students, 16 second-year Master students, 4 last-year engineer students and 5 undergraduate students. Moreover, 8 PhD students were supervised by scientists of the Unit, among which 2 were co-supervised together with foreign institutions: 1 with Exeter University in the UK and the other 1 with CSIRO (The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) in Australia. The Unit also hosted 9 post-doctoral researchers.

5 

 5 Statistics by field: SVE on 10/06/2013

	Grades

Critères C1 Qualité scientifique et production C2 Rayonnement et attractivité académiques C3 Relations avec l'environnement social, économique et culturel C4 Organisation et vie de l'entité C5 Implication dans la formation par la recherche C6 Stratégie et projet à cinq ans

	A+	67	62	52	73	65	60
	A	57	67	71	45	65	63
	B	12	7	4	7	6	14
	C	0	0	0	3	0	1
	Non Noté	3	3	12	11	3	1
	Percentages
	Critères	C1 Qualité scientifique et production	C2 Rayonnement et attractivité académiques	C3 Relations avec l'environnement social, économique et culturel	C4 Organisation et vie de l'entité	C5 Implication dans la formation par la recherche	C6 Stratégie et projet à cinq ans
	A+	48%	45%	37%	53%	47%	43%
	A	41%	48%	51%	32%	47%	45%
	B	9%	5%	3%	5%	4%	10%
	C	0%	0%	0%	2%	0%	1%
	Non Noté	2%	2%	9%	8%	2%	1%
	Histogram

 Supervising bodies' general comments

With respect to this score, the research unit concerned by this report received the following grades:

 Grading table of the unit: Halieutique de Manche-Mer du Nord (HMMN)


Mazan

Grading

Once the visits for the 2012-2013 evaluation campaign had been completed, the chairpersons of the expert committees, who met per disciplinary group, proceeded to attribute a score to the research units in their group (and, when necessary, for these units' in-house teams). This score (A+, A, B, C) concerned each of the six criteria defined by the AERES. NN (not-scored) attached to a criteria indicate that this one was not applicable to the particular case of this research unit or this team. Criterion 1 -C1 : Scientific outputs and quality ; Criterion 2 -C2 : Academic reputation and appeal ; Criterion 3 -C3 : Interactions with the social, economic and cultural environment ; Criterion 4 -C4 : Organisation and life of the institution (or of the team) ; Criterion 5 -C5 : Involvement in training through research ; Criterion 6 -C6 : Strategy and five-year plan.

With respect to this score, the research unit concerned by this report (and, when necessary, its in-house teams) received the following grades:  Grading table of the unit: Developmental Genetics of Marine Models C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6

The proposed unit results from a reorganization of the UMR 7139 (Biomolécules et Végétaux Marins) and UMR 7150 (Mer et Santé). It associates two teams, one headed by Sylvie MAZAN (presently in UMR 7150) and one headed by Bénédicte ChARRIER (presently in UMR 7139). This led to the project of creation of a unit using algae and metazoan and entitled Developmental Genetics of Marine Models.

Management team

It is proposed that the Unit is directed by Ms Sylvie MAZAN and that a scientific Council is set up for governing the Unit. The Unit also expects to rely on FR424 for health and safety follow-up, logistics as well as administrative services and technical plateforms. The project submitted for the creation of a new UMR named « Developmental genetics and marine models » aims at gathering the teams of Sylvie MAZAN and of Bénédicte ChARRIER, currently in the UMR 7139 Biomolécules et Végétaux Marins and UMR 7150 Mer et Santé respectively. The team led by Sylvie MAZAN studies the evolution of vertebrate development, at early stages of embryogenesis (formation of axes and main layers) as well as at later stages (establishment of brain asymmetries), using taxa occupying basal positions in the vertebrate tree (Lamprey and Catshark). Bénédicte CHARRIER's team studies the development of brown algae using the new model system Ectocarpus, which was largely established in the Station by joint efforts from another group and Bénédicte ChARRIER herself. She is interested in how Ectocarpus cell types and filament branching are established during development, using induced mutants and increasingly biophysical approaches. Brown algae are very distant from the prominent models currently used in the evo-devo field, which is not a real problem. However, Bénédicte ChARRIER's project does not specifically addresses evolutionary processes through comparative approaches. The committee has evaluated each team individually and has reached very positive conclusions on their respective past research and current projects, which are both excellent and original. There is no doubt that both PIs are able to produce high impact publications and to attract talented young scientists.

AERES nomenclature

SVE1_LS3, SVE2_LS3

Unit workforce

Weaknesses and Threats

The committee was quite surprised to observe in the documents provided for the evaluation and during the presentations by the team leaders that none of their past or current research projects has associated or associates the two teams. There are neither collaboration and common publication, nor shared intellectual constructions on potential synergies that would give their association a relevant scientific ground. Elaborating common reflections would have been particularly required in this case, since the scientific questions, the model systems and the methodologies used by either team are very different. The genesis of credible common projects in the highly competitive context of external funding demanded major efforts and these are not at all visible.

The opinion of the committee is that sharing general interest for a broad discipline such as developmental biology is far from sufficient for justifying the creation and support of a new structure, even in a Marine Station where scientific projects are traditionally more dispersed than elsewhere. Because no current or potential synergy is found in the documents provided, the committee was also surprised to hear that the other main reason put forward for the UMR creation is "a common view on UMR management".

The proposed creation carries obvious risks of a damageable scientific split between Bénédicte ChARRIER's team and another team at the station, whose project is to be carried out within a distinct UMR. This team also works on the development of Ectocarpus and on the generation of multiple resources that Bénédicte ChARRIER's team will need for its own projects.

Recommendations

In conclusion, the committee feels that, as proposed, the association of the two teams in one unit is not scientifically justified.

 Detailed assessments

Assessment of scientific quality and outputs

Not applicable

Assessment of the unit's academic reputation and appeal

Not applicable

Assessment of the unit's interaction with the social, economic and cultural environment

Nort applicable

Assessment of the unit's organisation and life:

Not applicable

Assessment of the unit's involvement in training through research

Not applicable

Assessment of the five-year plan and strategy See Assessment of the unit in section 2 9 4  Team-by-team analysis

Assessment of scientific quality and outputs

The research team, which arrived at the Marine Station in 2009, is currently composed of 6 members. It is interested in the evolution of development in vertebrates. In this context the team is using two non-conventional model organisms, the Lamprey and Catshark. In these two species, the team is currently focusing on two different aspects: (i) patterning and morphogenesis are analysed during early embryogenesis and (ii) asymmetry in the epithalamus is studied during later development. In parallel, the team is coordinating and contributing to the Catshark genome project. Whereas evolution and morphogenesis are widely studied and competition is strong, the choice of these non-conventional models provides the team with a strong strategic advantage, as this will allow them to approach the scientific questions from an original and exciting historical angle. The committee therefore evaluated the project as original and innovative. The installations at Roscoff also guarantee optimal conditions for carrying out such an ambitious set of projects and the team has benefited from several technical platforms, in particular for the production and manipulation of embryos as well as imaging. The downside of choosing non-conventional models is that a substantial amount of energy has to be invested in technical developments. The team has made this effort and has now an extensive set of tools and resources, ranging from bio-informatics to 3D imaging and whole mount in situ hybridization.

The scientific production of the team PI is good, with a total of 13 publications in the last five years, mostly in collaboration (Mol Biol Evol, PLoS One, J Comp Neurol, BMC Evol Biol…). Among these, one review with the team leader as corresponding author (J Anat) is directly resulting from the projects started in 2009. In addition, several publications are currently being submitted to high impact journals. In view of the time needed to set up such an ambitious and challenging project this seems more than fairly productive.

Assessment of the unit's academic reputation and appeal

The team is well integrated in the international evo-devo community. The team leader has been invited to several national and international meetings and has been very active and successful in developing collaborative networks. Notably, she is currently coordinating an ANR project (EVOLAX) involving two other partners and is heading an international consortium of 35 partners (GENOSHARK) aimed at analysing the transcriptome and genome of the catshark.

At this stage, with the project still in its early stages, it is difficult to assess the ability to recruit top level scientists, but the ambition to do so is clearly present.

Assessment of the unit's interaction with the social, economic and cultural environment

Not applicable

Assessment of the unit's organisation and life

The team is relatively small and functions in a competent, efficient manner, with regular team meetings. The team members are all very motivated and expressed their enthusiasm for their own projects. The team has access to all the facilities at the Marine Station, which provides strong technological support.

Assessment of the unit's involvement in training through research

With the presence since 2011 of a lecturer (enseignant-chercheur) in the team, the potential is high. Since 2011, a number of initiatives have been taken, but these were not assessed during the evaluation.

Assessment of the five-year plan and strategy

The team has established a set of clear objectives within three well-defined projects. As mentioned above, the choice to focus on non-conventional models bears a number of obvious risks and presents a number of challenges. However, the important investments made over the last three years have put the team in a strong strategic position and the team should produce highly visible results within the coming years. Nevertheless, the committee also considered the amount of work to be carried out on the three proposed themes possibly overambitious given the current team size. This problem is mentioned in the SWOT analysis of the research unit (involving the two teams).

Conclusion

 Strengths and opportunities:

During the last three years, the team has been able to set up an original, strong research project which has started to yield very promising results. The developed techniques and resources, further complemented by the facilities available at the Marine Station provide the team with a solid basis for further research. The team has access to a well-established, international network of collaborations.

 Weaknesses and threats:

The size of the team seems sub-optimal in view of the ambition of the research projects. The team seems also to be little connected scientifically to the rest of the Marine Station. Interactions with the B. Charrier's team in particular seem minimal.

 Recommendations:

The evaluation committee encourages the team to prioritize clearly their research objectives and to focus all their strength on the most promising goals.

12 4  Team-by-team analysis Over the last 5 years the team members have contributed to 13 scientific publications most signed in first and/or last position (including 2 reviews) and two book chapters. Three publications as well as one review -all signed in first and/or last position -have been published after the creation of the team (Plant Physiol. (IF 6.5), Plant Cell. (IF 8.9), Plant Signal Behav., Trends Plant Sci. (IF 11)), thus indicating a good potential of the team for high quality publications.

In addition, the team has contributed to the development of valuable new tools and approaches. Most notably the team has contributed to Ectocarpus genome annotation and the generation of a library of about 60 mutants exhibiting morphogenetic defects (the characterization of one of these mutants is reported in two publications) and has developed bioinformatics tools for the modelling of early filament development and branching in Ectocarpus.

Assessment of the unit's academic reputation and appeal

The team already has an important international reputation as demonstrated by the initiation of international collaboration and its role as a co-founder of an international network on macro algae morphogenesis (Phycomorph) unifying 23 partners from 10 different countries as well as by several invitations for seminars in French and European institutions. In addition the team has benefited from the support by the Europole Mer research consortium.

Since its creation, the team has recruited one permanent assistant engineer, one Post-doc, one PhD student and one non-permanent technician attesting the attractiveness of the team.

The major point of weakness is the current lack of funding and research grants

Assessment of the unit's interaction with the social, economic and cultural environment

Not applicable

Assessment of the unit's organisation and life

The functioning and life of the group is difficult to judge, as the team is recent. The current organization of the team is coherent with respect to the scientific project. The competences of the team members cover in particular developmental biology, genetics, bioinformatics and biochemistry. In addition, the group benefits from the various facilities available at the FR2424.

Assessment of the unit's involvement in training through research

The team is strongly involved in training through research. On the one hand, the group has trained two PhD students and three Masters students. On the other hand, an assistant professor at UPMC conceived and coordinates teaching units in Masters programs, which are related to his research competencies and contribute to training through research of students.

Assessment of the five-year plan and strategy

The five years project of the team is well constructed and mainly aims at pursuing the study of the mechanisms involved in Ectocarpus morphogenesis through the characterization of two mutant strains exhibiting cell differentiation effects and the identification of the affected genes. The major evolution of the project concerns the study of the influence of mechanical constraints to Ectocarpus morphogenesis. The main strength of this project is the use of a great variety of approaches that are at the interface between biology, bioinformatics and biophysics. The team further puts important efforts in the development of transgenic approaches. The achievement of this aim would be of greatest interest for the scientific community working on Ectocarpus as it presents an important and still missing tool for genetic studies in this organism.

Conclusion

 Strengths and opportunities:

The team is well integrated in an international network and has an important expertise in the study of early Ectocarpus development. The research project proposed by the group is innovative and original in particular by the combination of multiple approaches at the interface between biology, bioinformatics and biophysics.

The team is further strongly involved in the training through research and has a high potential of attractiveness for Masters and PhD students as well as post-doc researchers.

 Weaknesses and threats:

The main weakness of the group is the current lack of funding. In addition, while the national and international collaborations of the team are expanding, interactions with local teams seem limited.

 Recommendations:

The implication in an international network potentially increases the opportunities and the success rate for grant applications. However, given the local environment it could be opportune to develop stronger interactions with local teams working on Ectocarpus to 1) share expertise and put common efforts in the development of new tools and approaches and 2) to submit joint applications for local and national funding.

Histogram

Developmental Genetics and Marine Models : UMR creation project (S. Mazan)

Comments on the AERES assessment (AERES delegate P. Couble, president D. Chourrout)

Assessment of the individual groups

We have no comments on the assessments of the DGeMM project teams and are of course happy of the very positive return from the committee.

Assessment of the unit

Concerning the unit project, we would like to stress several aspects, which were missed in the assessment and which reply to the criticisms of the committee.

Assessment of scientific quality and outputs

This section of the report makes a synthesis of the assessment of the individual groups but makes no mention of key questions such as the relevance of an expansion of the evo-devo community in Roscoff and the modalities to reach this goal in this case.

Weaknesses and threats:

The main weaknesses put forward are (1) the absence of scientific links between the applicants, (2) a risk of split between the MMA (Charrier) and Cock's groups and (3) to a minor extent, the overestimation of management issues. All these points are successively addressed below.

(a) Differences in scientific questions/model systems/methodologies between the applicant groups (MMA-Charrier and DEV-Mazan).

There is no doubt that the model organisms studied by the two groups are phylogenetically distant and that the methodologies employed differ. This is actually also the case in many developmental biology units developing a wide range of model organisms from diploblasts or annelids to mammals, or from unicellular eukaryotes to algae, metazoans or green plants. In fact, the analysis of organisms undergoing pluricellular development in distantly related taxa leads to original questions and potentially extremely fruitful cross-fertilizations, as developed in (b) below. In our view, this is an opportunity rather than a weakness. We do not feel either that the differences in the technical aspects of experimental approaches can be a problem, as long as heavy infrastructures are not required. In contrast, we stress that the general rationale (use of nonconventional organisms chosen for their phylogenetic position, multidisciplinary approaches) and the scientific questions addressed by the two groups (morphogenesis, patterning, polarity) are strictly the same in different taxa. This is detailed in the written application (pp 4-5-6). These scientific convergences have been acknowledged by the association of the two groups (1) to the same items of the LABEX "DEVONET" ("Developmental Biology Integrative Network") project coordinated by E. Houliston (items "Polarity and axis specification" and "Morphogenesis") and ( 2) to a recent application to a PRES Sorbonne Université offer call, coordinated by S. Schneider-Maunoury, A. Carbone and S. Mazan ("Développement, évolution, adaptation: nouvelles approches, nouvelles questions").

(b) Absence of shared intellectual constructions.

A relatively extended part of the written application was actually devoted to such a construction (p8). To summarize briefly, this scientific aspect of the project deals with the understanding of the basic cellular mechanisms (adhesion, chirality, cytoskeleton dynamics, cell communication and proliferation), which lie at the origin of developmental mechanisms of complex multicellular forms, and with the modalities of their recruitments in different eukaryotic taxa.

(c) Absence of potential synergies. In addition to the general conceptual aspects recalled above, the two groups also have complementary methodological skills, resulting in synergies and collaborations: use of Atomic Force Microscopy and modeling (physical and systemic approaches in which the MMA group is strongly committed and for which the early catshark embryo provides a suitable system); bioinformatics (taking advantage of the expertise of B. Billoud, MMA, in the catshark genome project coordinated by DEV and in transcriptomic analyses included in the DEV project); in situ hybridization (technique not yet available in Ectocarpus and in the MMA group, the DEV group being the only one in Roscoff with this skill). Several of these aspects have been cited in the written application or in the ppt presentation of the UMR project.

(d) Absence of collaborations and common publications. Indeed we chose to insist on international rather than local collaborations in our application. In fact, the complementary skills cited above (point c) have already led to active on-going collaborations. These have been realized through the submission of a joined ANR project of the DEV and MMA groups in January 2012 ("EVOMORPH"). A manuscript co-signed by the two groups will also be submitted in the coming weeks (Characterization of the BMP gradient in the catshark embryo, including a quantification conducted by B. Billoud, MMA).

(e) Risk of split between the M. Cock and MMA (Charrier) groups. In our view, the discussions that have taken place between these two groups and the DEV team in the past two years have certainly not been detrimental to the relationships between the former two. The interactions between these groups have not either been impacted by the decision of the Cock and Charrier groups to associate to different unit projects. For instance, M. Cock has recently given access to the BAC library constructed by his group in a collaborative work. Conversely, B. Charrier has associated M. Cock to the European COST project submission, which she is coordinating. To further take this point into account and amplify, whenever applicable, these interactions, we are currently starting regular meetings between the DEV and MMA groups, to which M. Cock's group will be systematically invited. We feel that such meetings in a small community speaking the same scientific language and sharing related interests is the most appropriate way to enhance interactions.

(f) Requirement for common projects in a competitive context of external funding. The association of the DEV and MMA groups in a PRES Sorbonne-Université call for proposal and in an ANR submission has been cited above. Beyond this point, we feel that in the very basic evo-devo field, associations between groups should not be forced. We have chosen an alternate way, described in the written application, to deal with the limitation of funding sources cited by the committee: reallocate CNRS and UMPC recurrent funding to ensure the viability of each group, taking the contracts awarded into account, which preserves both the attractiveness of, and the solidarity within the unit (p12 of the written application).

(g) Overestimation of the importance of management aspects. Beyond the scientific aspects detailed above, we think that in an emerging structure, addressing management aspects, including governance rules and policy of resource allocation, is important to ensure that the cohesion of this community be maintained beyond scientific aspects. These points also impact scientifically important aspects (recruitment of novel groups, support to innovative and risky projects).

In summary, contrary to the committee conclusions, we are convinced that the DEV and MMA groups share the same scientific background and are on the way to construct fruitful scientific interactions. They are also grouped by a strong commitment for an expansion of the evo-devo community in Roscoff. The quality and the position of the two groups, as assessed by the committee, is undoubtedly an essential factor for the success of this project. We regret that the key questions about the relevance of this project in Roscoff and the modalities to fulfil it, were not addressed by the committee.

  Other professors (Emeritus Professor, on-contract Professor, etc.) spent at least 12 months in the unit* Number of Research Supervisor Qualifications (HDR) taken Qualified research supervisors (with an HDR) or similar positions 2  Assessment of the unit Assessment of scientific quality and outputs

  quality and outputsThe research team was created in January 2009 and has largely contributed to the development of Ectocarpus siliculosus as an experimental model for brown algae genetics and developmental biology. The main aim of the team is to characterize the mechanisms and molecular factors involved in Ectocarpus morphogenesis and early filament development including cell communication, proliferation and polarization.

6

  Statistics by field: SVE on 10/06/2013

Team 1 : Development and Evolution of Vertebrates Name of team leader: Ms Sylvie MAZAN Workforce Team workforce Number as at 30/06/2012 Number as at 01/01/2014

			2014-2018
			Number of
			project
			producers
	N1: Permanent professors and similar positions	1	1
	N2: Permanent EPST or EPIC researchers and similar positions	1	1
	N3: Other permanent staff (without research duties)
	N4: Other professors (PREM, ECC, etc.)	3
	N5: Other EPST or EPIC researchers (DREM, Postdoctoral students, visitors, etc.)
	N6: Other contractual staff
	(without research duties)
	TOTAL N1 to N6	5	2
		Number as	Number as
	Team workforce	at 30/06/2012	at 01/01/2014
	Doctoral students	2
	Theses defended
	Postdoctoral students having spent at least 12 months in the unit	1
	Number of Research Supervisor Qualifications (HDR) taken
	Qualified research supervisors (with an HDR) or similar positions	1	1
			10

 Detailed assessments

Grades Critères C1 Qualité scientifique et production C2 Rayonnement et attractivité académiques C3 Relations avec l'environnement social, économique et culturel C4 Organisation et vie de l'entité C5 Implication dans la formation par la recherche C6 Stratégie et projet à cinq ans

	A+	67	62	52	73	65	60
	A	57	67	71	45	65	63
	B	12	7	4	7	6	14
	C	0	0	0	3	0	1
	Non Noté	3	3	12	11	3	1
	Percentages
	Critères	C1 Qualité scientifique et production	C2 Rayonnement et attractivité académiques	C3 Relations avec l'environnement social, économique et culturel	C4 Organisation et vie de l'entité	C5 Implication dans la formation par la recherche	C6 Stratégie et projet à cinq ans
	A+	48%	45%	37%	53%	47%	43%
	A	41%	48%	51%	32%	47%	45%
	B	9%	5%	3%	5%	4%	10%
	C	0%	0%	0%	2%	0%	1%
	Non Noté	2%	2%	9%	8%	2%	1%