Dr Grant Hughes

Biography

Grant’s PhD research at The University of Queensland focused on developing a symbiotic control strategy of an agricultural disease caused by a viral pathogen transmitted by Planthoppers. To further his expertise in the vector biology and symbiosis fields he undertook a Postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and then a Research Associate position at Penn State University where he examined the interactions between Wolbachia, a common bacterial endosymbiont of insects, other microbiota, and Plasmodium parasites in Anopheles mosquitoes. In 2015, Grant joined the Department of Pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch as an Assistant Professor and focused on examining interactions between the microbiome and arboviruses in Aedes mosquitoes. Grant joined the Departments of Vector Biology and Tropical Disease Biology at LSTM in 2018 where his group works on arboviruses and microbes of mosquitoes.

Research interests

Research in the Hughes lab centres around host-microbe interactions within mosquitoes and understanding the molecular basis for these interactions. Specifically, we are interested in the following topics.

• Examining the tripartite interactions between mosquitoes, their microbiome and the pathogens they transmit.
• Characterising transmission routes of gut associated microbes within mosquitoes.
• Developing new tools for manipulating microbiota and identifying mosquito phenotypes influenced by the microbiome and the genetics that mediate these interactions.
• Exploiting gut associated microbes to deliver molecules to interfere with pathogen transmission in mosquitoes.
• Developing novel tools to engineer mosquitoes.
• Exploiting genetics approaches to render mosquitoes incapable of transmitting pathogens to humans.

Selected research publications

Genetic dynamics of the Duffy antigen receptor for chemokines gene and Plasmodium vivax circulation within sub-Saharan Africa – Journal: Infection, Genetics and Evolution – Published: 16th December 2025

Microbiota diversity of Anopheles gambiae in Bankeng, southern Cameroon, and its association with Plasmodium falciparum infection – Journal: mSphere – Published: 5th December 2025

Mosquito host background impacts microbiome-Zika virus interactions in field- and laboratory-reared Aedes aegypti – Journal: Animal Microbiome – Published: 5th November 2025

Bacteria-mediated dsRNA delivery for mosquito-borne virus control – Journal: Trends In Parasitology – Published: 1st October 2025

Impact of temperature on vector competence of Culex pipiens molestus implications for Usutu virus transmission in temperate regions – Journal: Parasites and Vectors – Published: 29th July 2025

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