Nicolas Le Novère is a British and French biologist, senior group leader at the Babraham Institute.
Education
Le Novère obtained his Baccalauréat at the Prytanée National Militaire. He received a Master of Science (1993) in Biology and Biochemistry from the École Normale Supérieure, a Bachelor of Science in Cellular Biology and Physiology (1991), and a Doctor of Philosophy in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology (1998) from the Pierre and Marie Curie University. From 1999 to 2001, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dennis Bray at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom).
Career
His research is focused on modeling signaling pathways and developing tools to share mathematical models. The first part of Le Novère"s career, in the laboratory of Jean-Pierre Changeux at the Pasteur Institute, was focused on studying Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the brain. He reconstructed their phylogeny, predicted and modeled their structure.
He also investigated the role of the alpha6 subunit in the dopaminergic neurons of the mesencephalon.
During his post-doctoral fellowship in the group of Dennis Bray at the University of Cambridge, he modeled the molecular networks underlying bacterial chemotaxis. Le Novère then became involved in the development standards to share mathematical models such as SBML, of which he would later become editors
In 2003, Le Novère built a research group at the European Bioinformatics Institute (European Molecular Biology Laboratory-EBI). The group studied the signaling pathways underlying synaptic plasticity, in particular the allosteric calcium sensors.
In parallel, his group coordinated the development of a consistent set of standards in systems biology, including the graphical notation SBGN, the guidelines MIRIAM and MIASE, the languages SED-Master of Laws and PharmML, and ontologies such as the Systems Biology Ontology.
He also created BioModels Database and the Identifiers.org URIs. Le Novère moved his group to the Babraham Institute in 2012. He is currently associate editor of the journals Business Service Management Systems Biology and NPJ Systems Biology and Applications.