Edwin Pierre Louis
Hi, my name is Edwin Pierre Louis. I grew up in Haiti and went to University of Florida where I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and received a minor in Spanish. My immediate goal is to earn a doctoral degree in Biomedical Sciences.
My passion for science began as a young boy while growing up in Haiti. Haiti does not have a vast amount of scientists but my 11th grade professor who was one of the few biochemists in Haiti had a huge impact on me. He inspired me to start questioning basic scientific notions related to chemistry.
I started my quest in United States in search of opportunities. After earning my Bachelor Degree in Biochemistry at UF, I decided to work for the University at the Biotechnology department, which focuses on Gene Therapy and Cell Therapy. My experiences in gene therapy lead to my awareness of CRISPR for its biomedical application and its revolutionized impact in gene-editing platform.
As I was more exposed to cutting-edge research questions, my interest in research continued to grow which guided me towards this career path.
Earning a PhD in biomedical research will advance my skill set in this area and help me bare scientific work on a daily basis.
In the future, I would like to further acquire post-doctoral training before venturing into academia, industry or government institutes as a principal investigator.
I joined the PREP program because of the high quality research the faculty mentors at UGA have, which will help me to grow as an early career researcher.
Dr. Michael Terns is my faculty mentor and Dr. Yunzhou Wei is my research mentor. My research in the Terns lab focuses on investigating the mechanisms that underlie invader DNA acquisitions by a type II A CRISPR-Cas System in Streptococcus thermophilus.
CRISPR-Cas systems are RNA-based immune defense mechanism systems that protect prokaryotes from invaders such as bacterial viruses called phage. During phage infection, short phage sequences are integrated into the bacterial CRISPR loci, then transcribed into small RNA molecules, which further guide the nucleases components to the viral targets to cleave the phage DNA and achieve immunity.
Previous studies have shown that the process of adaptation by a type II-A CRISPR-Cas system in bacteria Streptococcus thermophilus requires four proteins: Cas1, Cas2, Cas9, and Csn2. My research aims to understand the role of each required protein. For this investigation, a genetic approach on the CRISPR adaptation will be taken by sequencing analyses. Furthermore, a biochemical approach will also be considered to reconstitute adaptation via molecular cloning, protein purification and in vitro activity assays.
Bacteria are constantly challenged by infection by their viruses called bacteriophages. Similar to our immune system, bacteria also possess immune defense systems called CRISPR-Cas systems. These systems memorize past virus infections and protect the bacteria from future infections. My project focuses on the molecular mechanism of these systems, specifically how the immunization memory was achieved. For this investigation, I am applying a genetic approach to examine the immunization process with deletions of the required genes. Furthermore, I am also taking a biochemical approach with purified proteins to reconstitute this process.
My name is Edwin Pierre Louis and I am a PREP@UGA scholar.