Benoit Coulombe

Who is Benoit Coulombe?

Benoit Coulombe is a Canadian scientist whose research focuses on the mechanisms by which regulated protein–protein, protein–DNA and protein–RNA interactions control the activity of RNA polymerase II, the molecular machine that synthesizes all messenger RNA and some small-nuclear RNA in eukaryotes.

Born in Granby, Québec, Canada in 1958, Coulombe obtained his bachelor degree in Biochemistry and his PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Montreal before undertaking postdoctoral work at the University of Toronto and the Free University of Brussels. He then moved at the University of Sherbrooke as an Assistant Professor in 1993 where he attained the tenured rank of Full Professor, and to the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal in 2001.

Coulombe is best known for his "promoter wrapping model" for transcriptional initiation by multi-subunit RNA polymerases, which has been described in molecular biology textbooks. More recently, his laboratory has used protein affinity purification coupled with mass spectrometry to generate high-resolution maps of the interactome of human RNA polymerases.