BREED is a key player in the construction of the European Research Area and contributes to the process of European integration. Under the 7th Framework Program for Research and Development (FP7), BREED has taken part in some ten European Commission research networks and programs.

Participation in European programs and networks

The unit has been and still is involved in several European research contracts (PluriSys: System biology approaches to understand cell pluripotency, Euratools: European Rat Tools for Functional Genomics, REEF: Reproductive effects of environmental chemicals in females, FECUND: FundamEntal Cattle ReprodUctioN StuDy and PROLIFIC: Pluridisciplinary study for a RObust and sustainabLe Improvement of Fertility in Cows and a bilateral ANR with Hungary: Plurabbit.

These two projects focus on improving the reproductive capacities of cattle and the interactions between nutrition/metabolism/reproduction. These two projects enable us to collaborate with the leading teams in this field in Europe.

BREED is also a member of several European networks: iPUD (EMIDA 2010-2013), NoE (EpigeneSys) and COST (GEMINI, RGBnet, Epiconcept, SALAAM).

De plus, BREED a participé à des consortiums ayant abouti au séquençage des génomes ou la construction d’outils de génomique: chèvre (PLoS One. 2014 Jan 22;9(1):e86227), et lapin (Science. 2014 Aug 29;345(6200):1074-9).

The BREED unit has historic collaborations with several internationally renowned researchers, including JF Beckers, M. Georges and C. Charlier, Université de Liège, Belgium, P. Humblot, SLU Sweden, PA Fowler, University of Aberdeen, RG Lea, University of Nottingham, Sheldon IM, University of Swansea, Lonergan P , University College Dublin, Ireland, UK.

International collaborations

Over the last ten years or so, we have been collaborating with the USA (Harris Lewin, Cindy Tian, Jerry Yang) on the construction of an atlas of gene expression in bovine placenta, and this is now evolving towards obtaining and integrating high-throughput genotyping, transcriptome and methylome data from bovine clones (Pr Harris Lewin &Pablo Ross, University of California, Davis). We have also started a collaboration with a Japanese team on the search for epigenetic signatures in bovine clones. (Kaneda Masahiro, National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science (NILGS), National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO), Tsukuba, Japan).

Similarly, historic collaborations exist via the international EmbryoGENE network (MA Sirard, Canada), and new ones have emerged with the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan USA (Padmanabhan V) on fetal programming in sheep.