I'm Solenne, a molecular biologist and a bioinformatician passionate about the complexity of human and non-human genomes 🧬.

I am driven by the will to use genomic to help navigate some of today's worldwide challenges, such as ensuring equal access to personalized medicine to everyone around the globe, regardless of their origin or economic background, and studying climate change repercussions on earth biodiversity and fresh water / food supply to help prevent future dramatic events.

As a researcher, I am committed to the development of new modes of collaboration, engagement, and partnership with Indigenous peoples for the care and stewardship of past and future heritage collections.

This Notice indicates a commitment to change and to developing new processes and practices for the care and stewardship of past and future heritage collections. This has been done through my previous work experience and is at the core of my current work with Wise Ancestors.

For more information about this notice, visit LocalContexts website

Currently, I am the scientific director for Wise Ancestors, a non-profit organization braiding Indigenous knowledge with cutting-edge biotechnology to safeguard biodiversity.

The Wise Ancestors platform interweaves genomic sequencing, biobanking, and Indigenous Knowledge to create, fund and complete Conservation Challenges, accelerating the conservation of Earth's biodiversity for the benefit of all.

Research associate in the Jones lab working as the bioinformatic lead for the Canada Earth Biogenome Project which aims to make available 400 high quality reference genomes for Canadian species that represent a diverse domain of life.

Within this large project, I implemented the Canadian Biogenome pipeline that the team is using to generate the genome assemblies for multiple species. It relies on well established softwares for genome assemblies and is embedded in a NextFlow framework, feel free to try it out and give feedback or PR!
I was also doing some analysis for end-users of the project : improvement of previously published assemblies, paternity tests for animal in captivity or semi-captivity to help breeding programs, etc.
On the research side, I was investigating methylation pattern for the newly generated assemblies and exploring the use of multi-species pangenomes.

As a post-doctoral fellow in the Wasserman lab, I was working on the Silent Genomes Project. The overall goal of the Silent Genomes project is to reduce health care disparities and improve diagnostic success for children with genetic diseases from Indigenous populations in Canada.

Within this large project, I focused on the development of the Indigenous Background Variant Library, which is a database of DNA variants present in a group of people without severe genetic conditions, which will help to determine variants that are common or rare in the general population, and therefore, help diagnosis of rare diseases in these populations. Building the database included the developement of the variant catalogue pipeline and the developement of the database (back-end and front-end) for end-users to access the variants frequencies.

As a variant analyst and bioinformatician in the TIDE project, I was working together with clinicians, geneticists and other team members to improve diagnosis, treatment and care for patients affected with inborn errors of metabolism.

During my PhD, I studied a non-coding variant implicated in a rare disease without interpretation guidelines directly relevant for such variants. To address that gap in literature, during my post-doc, I reviewed non-coding variants implicated in human rare disease to create interpretation guidelines for non-coding variants based on 24 criteria. This led to the development of RevUP (Regulatory Evidence for Variants Underlying Phenotypes), an online scoring system using both online resources and user input.

In the past, I studied dog genomes 🐶 (mostly the non-coding part) to find and characterize variants implicated in neurological disorders, but also variants implicated in phenotypic characteristic such as morphology or coat color.

Why the dog genome?

Over the last few centuries, several hundred dog breeds have been artificially selected through intense breeding, resulting in the modern dog population having the widest polymorphism spectrum in terms of body shape, behavior and aptitude among mammals. Unfortunately, this diversification has predisposed most breeds to specific diseases of genetic origin (Galibert and André, 2006). Studying the dog genome can help understand diseases and other phenotypes, and have an impact for two species : Humans, and human "best-friends".

If you don't have access to one of these publications and wish to read it, let me know! Scientific publications should be accessible to all.

Reference genomes for multiple species through the NCBI portal under the Canadian BioGenome Project (CBP) umbrella BioProject.

Many assemblies have been submitted and are under review by NCBI (several months process), they will appear under this BioProject once available to the community. The list of species included in the project is available on the Project status & data page of the Canadian Biogenome Project website.

Indigenous Genomic Databases: Pragmatic Considerations and Cultural Contexts.

Caron NR, Chongo M, Hudson M, Arbour L, Wasserman WW, Robertson S, Correard S, Wilcox P. Front Public Health. 2020 Apr 24;8:111. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2020.00111. PMID: 32391301; PMCID: PMC7193324.

The variant catalogue pipeline: A workflow to generate a background variant library from Whole Genome Sequences.

Correard S, Abdallah M OE., Hewitson B., Wasserman W. W. bioRxiv 2022.02.11.479970; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.10.03.508010

Allele Dispersion Score: Quantifying the range of allele frequencies across populations, based on UMAP.

Correard S, Arbour L, Wasserman W. W. bioRxiv 2022.02.11.479970; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.02.11.479970

RevUP, an online scoring system for regulatory variants implicated in rare diseases.

Correard S, Hewitson B, van der Lee R, Wasserman WW. Bioinformatics. 2022 Mar 15:btac157. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btac157. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35289834.

Deregulated Regulators: Disease-Causing cis Variants in Transcription Factor Genes.

van der Lee R, Correard S, Wasserman WW. Trends Genet. 2020 Jul;36(7):523-539. doi: 10.1016/j.tig.2020.04.006. Epub 2020 May 22. PMID: 32451166.

JASPAR 2020: update of the open-access database of transcription factor binding profiles.

Fornes O, Castro-Mondragon JA, Khan A, van der Lee R, Zhang X, Richmond PA, Modi BP, Correard S, Gheorghe M, Baranašić D, Santana-Garcia W, Tan G, Chèneby J, Ballester B, Parcy F, Sandelin A, Lenhard B, Wasserman WW, Mathelier A. Nucleic Acids Res. 2020 Jan 8;48(D1):D87-D92. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkz1001. PMID: 31701148; PMCID: PMC7145627.

Canine neuropathies: powerful spontaneous models for human hereditary sensory neuropathies.

Correard S, Plassais J, Lagoutte L, Botherel N, Thibaud JL, Hédan B, Richard L, Lia AS, Delague V, Mège C, Mathis S, Guaguère E, Paradis M, Vallat JM, Quignon P, André C. Hum Genet. 2019 May;138(5):455-466. doi: 10.1007/s00439-019-02003-x. Epub 2019 Apr 6. PMID: 30955094.

A Point Mutation in a lincRNA Upstream of GDNF Is Associated to a Canine Insensitivity to Pain: A Spontaneous Model for Human Sensory Neuropathies.

Plassais J, Lagoutte L, Correard S, Paradis M, Guaguère E, Hédan B, Pommier A, Botherel N, Cadiergues MC, Pilorge P, Silversides D, Bizot M, Samuels M, Arnan C, Johnson R, Hitte C, Salbert G, Méreau A, Quignon P, Derrien T, André C. PLoS Genet. 2016 Dec 29;12(12):e1006482. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1006482. PMID: 28033318; PMCID: PMC5198995.

Canadian Earth Biogenome project assembly pipeline.

Biodiversity Genomics 23, virtual - October 2023

Building the path to equitable genomics care for Indigenous patients in Canada.

Day 3 plenary speakers at AGBT General meeting 2023

Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) General meeting, Florida, USA - 2023

The variant catalogue pipeline : A workflow to generate a variant catalogue from whole genome sequences.

Recording of Solenne Correard talk at the Nextflow summit 2022

Nextflow summit 2022, Barcelona, Spain - 2022

The Indigenous background variant library (IBVL) : from community engagement to implementation.

Talk shared with B. Morgan, BIGX Research Day, Vancouver, BC, Canada - 2021

The Indigenous background variant library (IBVL) : from community engagement to implementation.

Talk shared with B. Morgan, Indigenous Genomics Conference (1st) – Hamilton, New Zealand – 2020

The Silent Genomes project : Reducing health care disparities and improving diagnostic success for children with genetic diseases from Indigenous populations of Canada.

Talk shared with W. Wasserman, Workshop on Clinical implementation of Genomics and Epigenomics – Barbados – 2020

Sensory neuropathies : from the variant identification in hunting dogs to DNA screening in Human patients.

The 1st Companion Animal Genetic Health conference – Edinburgh, Scotland – 2018

Research of mutations implicated in Greater Swiss Mountain dogs and Cane corso epilepsies.

The 9th International Conference on Canine and Feline Genetics and Genomics – St-Paul, MN, U.S.A. – 2017

Introduction to NextFlow for genomics

Biodiveristy Genomics Academy - 2023, virtual

Non-coding variants : why they matter for rare disease disgnosis and how to identify and report them.

UBC Graduate Certificate in Genomic Counselling and Variant Interpretation - Genomic Testing and Clinical Bioinformatics (MEDG 580) (3 hr module course) - 2020, 2021

The Silent Genomes Project : inequities in rare disease genomics.

Session shared with W.W.Wasserman, UBC graduate student program - 2020

Teaching assistant for 3 semesters (during my PhD) to licence and masters students - 2017,2018.

Genetic program, Université de Rennes, France