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Welcome to the Himes Lab
________________________________ Contact Information: Email: paul dot himes at louisville dot edu Office: 204 Life Sciences Building Phone: (502) 852-7779 Lab: 209 Life Sciences Building Lab Phones: (502) 852-6733 (502) 854-0266 Mailing Address: Department of Biology 139 Life Sciences Building University of Louisville Louisville, KY 40292	What We Do: We are interested in how bacteria sense their surroundings and decide how to respond. If a pathogenic bacterium produces proteins important for surviving in a host when it’s not in the host, it will be wasting energy; be outcompeted by other, more efficient bacteria; and reach an evolutionary dead end. If it does survive long enough to make it into the host but hasn’t reached the right site yet, producing the wrong proteins could lead to detection by the host immune system and elimination (another outcome that doesn’t look promising for its survival as a species). Bacteria use a number of mechanisms to answer the important question of “How do I know when I should turn on and off these genes?” We study bacteria that live in mixed communities with several other bacteria and can cause disease in people with weakened immune systems. By dissecting the signaling pathways they use to sense whether any cells that might be around them are others like themselves, other species that can either help or hurt them, or host cells that they can prey upon, we hope to learn how bacteria make the decisions that impact there fitness and ability to cause disease. Currently, I am looking for a few motivated students (both graduate and undergrad) to fill available research positions in the lab. If you are interested, please contact me (info at left) with your status, research interests and experience (if any), and availability. To see a recent interview about a project my lab has been working on in conjunction with the lab of Dr. Deborah Yoder-Himes please click on the following link. Another project of the lab (identifying soil microbes that are able to promote plant growth) was subject to a recent profile in the news. To see what we've been up to, please click on the following link. UofL Students Digging Up The Dirt On Bacteria In The Soil If you are interested in applying to the Himes Lab for a graduate degree, please check out the requirements at the link below: http://louisville.edu/biology/graduate/checklist

Welcome to the Himes Lab

________________________________

Contact Information:

Email: paul dot himes at louisville dot edu

Office: 204 Life Sciences Building

Phone: (502) 852-7779

Lab: 209 Life Sciences Building

Lab Phones: (502) 852-6733

(502) 854-0266

Mailing Address:

Department of Biology

139 Life Sciences Building

University of Louisville

Louisville, KY 40292

What We Do:

We are interested in how bacteria sense their surroundings and decide how to respond. If a pathogenic bacterium produces proteins important for surviving in a host when it’s not in the host, it will be wasting energy; be outcompeted by other, more efficient bacteria; and reach an evolutionary dead end. If it does survive long enough to make it into the host but hasn’t reached the right site yet, producing the wrong proteins could lead to detection by the host immune system and elimination (another outcome that doesn’t look promising for its survival as a species).

Bacteria use a number of mechanisms to answer the important question of “How do I know when I should turn on and off these genes?” We study bacteria that live in mixed communities with several other bacteria and can cause disease in people with weakened immune systems. By dissecting the signaling pathways they use to sense whether any cells that might be around them are others like themselves, other species that can either help or hurt them, or host cells that they can prey upon, we hope to learn how bacteria make the decisions that impact there fitness and ability to cause disease.

Currently, I am looking for a few motivated students (both graduate and undergrad) to fill available research positions in the lab. If you are interested, please contact me (info at left) with your status, research interests and experience (if any), and availability.

To see a recent interview about a project my lab has been working on in conjunction with the lab of Dr. Deborah Yoder-Himes please click on the following link.

Another project of the lab (identifying soil microbes that are able to promote plant growth) was subject to a recent profile in the news. To see what we've been up to, please click on the following link.

UofL Students Digging Up The Dirt On Bacteria In The Soil

If you are interested in applying to the Himes Lab for a graduate degree, please check out the requirements at the link below:

http://louisville.edu/biology/graduate/checklist