Marie-Anne Lelu-Walter

**CURRENT POSITION** **Research Director** at INRAE (Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment) **Unit**: UMR BioForA, INRAE-ONF (Integrated Biology for the valorisation of trees and forest diversity) **Department**: ECODIV (Ecology and Biodiversity of forest, grassland and freshwater ecosystems) <Marie-anne.lelu-walter@inrae.fr> Web of Science ResearcherID: B-6282-2013 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4518-8767 **EDUCATION AND WORK EXPERIENCE** **1995**: HDR (Habilitation to Direct scientific Research), University of Orléans. **1988-1989**: Post-Doctoral position at Hilleshög Laboratory, Landskrona, Sweden, Prof C Bornman: *“induction of somatic embryogenesis in Picea mariana, P. glauca, from young plants”* **1985-1987**: PhD AFOCEL Nangis France, Drs A Franclet, M Boulay: “*Somatic embryogenesis in Picea abies from excised cotyledons of young plants”* **RESEARCH TOPICS** Reproduction, Conservation of forest genetic resources in climate change - Physiology of conifer embryo development (somatic *vs* zygotic) - Aptitude to somatic embryogenesis - Cryopreservation of conifer embryonal masses - Integration of conifer somatic embryogenesis into breeding program **EXPERTISE/ACTIVITIES** Dr Lelu-Walter has expertise in the biotechnologies of forest trees, in particular conifer species. Clonal propagation method such as somatic embryogenesis has been developed for the production of a large number of genetically improved plants (Lelu-Walter et al 2013; Klimaszewska et al 2016). Dr Lelu-Walter contributed to pioneering work on induction of somatic embryogenesis from older material than immature zygotic embryos of *Picea* sp. (phD 1987, Lelu et al 1987; Lelu and Bornman 1990, Lelu et al 1990) and *Larix* sp. (Lelu et al 1994). Over the past 30 years Dr Lelu-Walter has been developed somatic embryogenesis of *Picea*, *Larix* species especially hybrid larch, becoming a model system for conifer species (Lelu-Walter and Pâques 2009, Lelu-Walter et al 2016a). Anatomical studies (von Aderkas et al. 2015), proteomic and methylation analyses (Teyssier et al 2011, 2014) have been carried out allowing a better understanding of the process. Since 1998, Dr Lelu-Walter’s somatic embryogenesis research has been on *Pinus* *pinaster* and *P. sylvestris*, both economically important to forest industry in France and Europe (Lelu-Walter et al 2016b). In maritime pine, early physiological, cellular and molecular mechanisms (transcriptomic, proteomic levels) controlling somatic embryo differentiation have been studied (Morel et al 2014a). Finally, cotyledonay somatic embryo appeared very similar to fresh cotyledonary zygotic embryo, proteome profiling further confirmed high similarity (94.5%) between them (Morel et al 2014b). Recently, Dr Lelu-Walter successfully improved somatic embryogenesis of *Pseudotsuga* *menziesii* an important conifer species in Europe (Lelu-Walter et al 2018, Reeves et al 2018). Repetitive somatic embryogenesis dramatically improved the proliferating lines’ cellular organization (Gautier et al 2018). Integrated multi-scale transcriptomic, proteomic, biochemical, histological and anatomical analyses have been carried out to obtain insights into molecular events associated with embryogenesis and more specifically to the embryogenic state of cell in Douglas-fir. Sub-Network Enrichment Analyses highlighted functions and interactions between transcripts and proteins (Gautier et al 2019). Dr Lelu-Walter has also been developed a simplified method for the cryopreservation of embryogenic cultures of both *Larix* and *Pinus* species. Genetic engineering constitutes a powerful tool for breeding and research (to study tree physiology via gene regulation, Trontin et al 2016a). Since 1994, Dr Lelu-Walter contributed to pioneering work on genetic transformation of *Larix* via *Agrobacterium tumefaciens* (Levée et al 1997, Lelu and Pilate 2000) resulting for the first time in the establishment of an optimised transformation procedure for a conifer species that has been successfully transferred to *Picea* sp. (Klimaszewska et al. 2001) and applied for physiological studies (Gleeson et al. 2005, Rincon et al. 2005, Mathieu et al. 2006, Guillaumot et al. 2008).