Crossing Boundaries
A groundbreaker in the study of Listeria monocytogenes, Pascale Cossart continues to build her research tool kit to understand how to fight such intracellular human pathogens.
In the early 1980s, Pascale Cossart was a researcher at the Institut Pasteur, working on the interaction of E. coli proteins with DNA, when the Pasteur’s scientific director encouraged her to switch to the study of infectious diseases so as not to have to compete with bigger laboratories working on E. coli in the U.S. A biochemist with no biology training, Cossart chose to work on the food-borne bacterium Listeria monocytogenes, a little-studied and intriguing intracellular pathogen that can have serious consequences if it infects a pregnant woman or travels to the brain. Those with a compromised immune system are particularly at risk from complications of a Listeriainfection. “?This was a time when researchers were only just beginning to use molecular biology to study organisms other than E. coli,” says Cossart.