Christine Leroux

Christine Leroux (women, PhD, HDR) is a research director from INRAE, the French national institute for research in agriculture, nutrition and environment. After obtaining her PhD in Molecular Genetics (University of Orsay-Paris XI, France) in 1992, Christine started to work at INRA on milk components biosynthesis and secretion in dairy ruminants. She studies the effects of different factors (mainly genetics and nutritional) influencing mammary gland functioning during lactation. Christine’s research aims to improve nutritional quality of milk for consumers and to identify indicators of animal metabolism and health using strategies of nutrigenomics. She firstly studied the effects of genetics polymorphism on protein synthesis, and then she worked on effects of ruminant nutrition on mammary and in a lesser extent on adipose tissues gene expression associated with milk fat composition. More recently, she initiated studies on microRNA and their nutritional regulation in mammary gland. She was visiting researcher scientist at University of California Davis (2017-2019) where she investigated the potential role of milk microRNA as a food source bioactive and contributor to human health. End of 2020, she had 5383 citations and an h-index of 41 referenced by Google Scholar. She participated to 15 national and international research projects. She has 8 years of experience of management of research groups (more than 15 persons) and of a transcriptomic platform, and she has supervised over 26 students (both undergraduates and graduates).