Paul Boudreau
Assistant Professor of BioMolecular Sciences
Phone Number: (662)915-7026
Email: boudreau@olemiss.edu
https://olemiss.edu/people/boudreau

Key Words: natural products, cyanobacteria, lipids, biomineralization, symbiosis

Research Description: Research in the Boudreau lab focuses on bacterial natural products chemistry. Bacteria are found in every environment on Earth, and they occupy diverse ecological niches from symbiont, or primary producer, to predator. To thrive in these challenging circumstances they have evolved complex biosynthetic pathways to produce a multitude of small molecules that afford them the ability to attack other microbes, communicate with their symbiotic hosts, and survive environmental stressors.

Understanding the structure of bacterial natural products is essential to elucidate their role in shaping bacterial community structure, but also in harnessing those molecules as tools and therapeutics to improve human health and treat disease. Specific projects in the Boudreau lab include studying symbiosis between cyanobacteria and heterotrophic bacteria, exploring the biomineralization of toxic metals by bacteria, and probing the role of bacterial lipids in host immune regulation.

Honors Theses:

Starks, Victoria Aileen (2022) A Comparison of Heterotroph Isolation and Sequencing Methods From Various Cyanobacterial and Algal Microbiomes (full text)

Taylor, Lana Leigh (2022) The Design of a PCR-Based Assay to Detect and Isolate the Serine Palmitolytransferase Gene From Environmental Bacteria (full text)

Uribe Sanchez, Edgar David (2022) Isolation of Sphingolipids from Sphingomonas echinoides B-3126 and their Characterization by MS/MS Analysis (full text)