photographist

“I was a underachiever in school; I was not stupid, merely someone who continually questioned andwho did not like school. After graduating, I went to college, unaware of what was going to happen. And I loved it! In college, you are free; it’s the first thing that I liked: you’re free and you choose what you want to do. I loved anything to do with plants, so I studied biology... When I was a little girl in the Auvergne, listening to the marine weather report at 6.45 a.m. on France Inter it stirred my imagination… So I went to Brest University to study marine biology. I chose Brest University because of all the trees on the campus … I spent exciting years in Brest and chose algae for my thesis – marine plants I found on the beach … For a long time, people thought it was not really respectable to study algae; scientists were more interested in higher plants for drug research.

Algae are the so-called “lower “plants;they are the first that appeared on earth after micro-organisms. In Asia, algae are regarded as vegetables, just like salad or onions. Worldwide, their second use is the extraction - in  billions of tons -, of agars, carrageenans, alginates, found in paint, flans, yogurts, custards … The last category involves cosmetics – marine plants, the ocean, blue waves are the stuff dreams are made of... algae are also fixed organisms. They synthesise chemical weapons to defend ourselves. If those weapons are effective against bacteria, we could assume they are going to be useful for human health or that one molecule could be useful for plant health. In algae I am seeking molecules that could have biological activities, as in higher plants...”

Nathalie Bourgougnon
Professor, Vice-chairwoman Research, University of Bretagne-Sud

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