Xavier Roucou

Xavier Roucou is a Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Université de Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1996 from the University of Bordeaux 2, with a thesis on mitochondrial bioenergetics and potassium fluxes. During his 3 postdoctoral positions in Melbourne (Australia), Geneva (Switzerland) and Montreal (Canada), he developed a strong expertise in protein misfolding and neuronal degeneration. He completed his journey to settle in Sherbrooke in 2004, Canada. Since 2018, he is heading the Department of Biochemistry.

He initially developed a research program on protein misfolding and neurodegenerative disorders. Following the serendipitous discovery that the prion protein gene is a dual-coding gene, he completely the focus of his laboratory to hunt for missing proteins coded by unannotated coding sequences. His team uses annotations of potential coding sequences based on experimental data rather than on presumptions and combines bioinformatics, proteomics, and biochemical approaches to functionally characterize non-canonical proteins.

His work has been awarded with several recognitions, among them Discovery of the year in 2014 (Quebec Science magazine), and a tier 1 Canada Research Chair in functional proteomics and the discovery of novel proteins.