Louis L'Hôte

CONTACT DETAILS:

E-mail : lhtel [at]tcd.ie
Tel : +353-(0)1-896-1265
Fax : +353-(0)1-679-8558

MODERN DNA LABORATORY ADDRESS:

Molecular Population Genetics
Smurfit Institute of Genetics
Trinity College Dublin
Dublin 2
Ireland

ANCIENT DNA LABORATORY ADDRESS (for archaeological samples):

Archaeological Genetics
Smurfit Institute of Genetics
Trinity College Dublin
Dublin 2
Ireland

RESEARCH INTEREST:

Animal domestication was one of the most important transitions in human history. Livestock animals were domesticated 10 000 years ago in southwest Asia, but little is known about their health (inbreeding, infectious disease) despite their underpinning of farmer societies. In the last few years, the advancement of Next generation sequencing techniques has made it possible to reconstruct different genomes of ancient human pathogens from archaeological specimens, such as Yersinia pestis, the agent of the Black Death, or Mycobacterium leprae, a mycobacterium responsible for leprosy. So far, the reconstruction of pathogen genomes has mainly been performed on human pathogens. My work focuses on obtaining pathogen and animal DNA from 10 000 years old sheep and goat material, from the Zagros Mountain in Iran, in order to understand how sheep and goat zoonotic pathogen evolution was shaped by the onset of domestication. I want also explore how this transition affected the genetic health the genetic health of ovicaprids by examining patterns of inbreeding and genetic diversity at immune genes and genome level.

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE:

September 2021-December 2021: Research intern, University of Lorraine, Dynamic lab, 'Genome dynamics and microbial adaptation'. Creation of a tool to detect recombination in Streptomyces genome. Supervisor: Pierre Leblond

May 2021-July 2021: Research intern, Pasteur Institute Paris, Microbial Paleogenomics lab Reconstruction of ancient woolly mammoth microbiota using metagenomics analysis. Supervisor: Nicolas Rascovan

September 2020-December 2020: Research intern, University of Lorraine, LIEC lab 'Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Continental Environments'. Production of a bacterial biosensor for the study of multidrug-resistant plasmid transfer. Supervisor: Patrick Billard

January 2020-May 2020: Research intern, University of Lorraine, Dynamic lab, 'Genome dynamics and microbial adaptation'. Production of a database of mobile genetic elements in streptococci. Supervisor: Gérard Guédon

EDUCATION & QUALIFICATIONS:

2022 – Present: PhD candidate, Bradley lab, Trinity College Dublin Thesis title: Ovicaprid genetic health and zoonosis at the dawn of domestication

2020-2022 : M.Sc. Microbiology, University of Lorraine (France) & University of Copenhagen (Denmark) Thesis title:Life on a Mars Analogue: Highlighting of strategies used by active microbial community to survive in Kap København. Supervisor: Anders Priemé

2017-2020: BSc Life Science, University of Lorraine (France) & University of Umea (Sweden). #

OTHER MERITS: