Lab Information
Luke Harrison (MD/PhD)
Associate InvestigatorCentre for Translational Biology
Department of Microbiology & Immunology (McGill)
Research Profile
Keywords
Infectious diseases • mycobacteria • comparative genomics • metagenomics • computational biologyResearch Interests
My research program investigates the evolution and pathobiology of mycobacteria. Mycobacteria inhabit a variety of habitats including soil, water, dust, and other niches and include both opportunistic and obligate human pathogens like Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the agent of tuberculosis. My lab integrates comparative genomics and metagenomics to study Mycobacterium tuberculosis and non-tuberculous mycobacterial infections. My current projects focus on elucidating the genomic dynamics of non-tuberculous mycobacterial infections through direct metagenomic sequencing of sputum samples. Another project is to develop computational tools for comparative genomic analysis within the M. tuberculosis complex. My overarching goal is to link microbial evolution with clinical outcomes to improve the diagnosis and understanding of mycobacterial disease.Team Members
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Latest Publications
- Danchuk, S. N., Duffy, S. C., Sullivan, J., Beenish Rufai, S., McIntosh, F. A., Lupien, A., Harrison, L. B., Ghasemi Goojani, H., Taylor, L., Wei, Y., Joubert, P., Mortensen, R., Chen, J. M., Niroula, N., Stevens, R., Norleen, C., Kapur, V. & Behr, M. A. (2025). Virulence hierarchies within the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 122, p. e2507104122.
- Lieu, A., Harrison, L. B., Harel, J., Lawandi, A., Cheng, M. P. & Domingo, M.--. C. (2024). The microbiological outcomes of culture-negative blood specimens using 16S rRNA broad-range PCR sequencing: a retrospective study in a Canadian province from 2018 to 2022. Journal of clinical microbiology, vol. 62, p. e0151823.
- Harrison, L. B., Kapur, V. & Behr, M. A. (2024). An imputed ancestral reference genome for the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex better captures structural genomic diversity for reference-based alignment workflows. Microbial genomics, vol. 10.
- Harrison, L. B. & Behr, M. A. (2023). Mutation rates and the molecular epidemiology of Mycobacterium abscessus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 120, p. e2307499120.
- Harrison, L. B., Bergeron, G., Cadieux, G., Charest, H., Fafard, J., Levade, I., Blais, A. C., Huchet, E., Trottier, B., Vlad, D., Szabo, J., Thomas, R., Poulin, S., Greenaway, C., Zaharatos, G. J., Oughton, M., Chakravarti, A., Pilarski, R., Bui-Nguyen, A., Benomar, K., Libman, M. D., Vinh, D. C., Duggan, A. T., Graham, M., Klein, M. B. & Barkati, S. (2023). Monkeypox in Montréal: Epidemiology, Phylogenomics, and Public Health Response to a Large North American Outbreak. Annals of internal medicine, vol. 176, p. 67-76.
- Barkati, S. & Harrison, L. B. (2022). Monkeypox outbreak 2022: "See one, do one, teach one" no longer the rule. Journal of the Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada = Journal officiel de l'Association pour la microbiologie medicale et l'infectiologie Canada, vol. 7, p. 157-158.
- Darwish, I., Harrison, L. B., Passos-Castilho, A. M., Labbé, A.-C., Barkati, S., Luong, M.-L., Kong, L. Y., Tutt-Guérette, M.-A., Kierans, J., Rousseau, C., Benedetti, A., Azoulay, L. & Greenaway, C. (2022). In-hospital outcomes of SARS-CoV-2-infected health care workers in the COVID-19 pandemic first wave, Quebec, Canada. PloS one, vol. 17, p. e0272953.
- Thornhill, J. P., Barkati, S., Walmsley, S., Rockstroh, J., Antinori, A., Harrison, L. B., Palich, R., Nori, A., Reeves, I., Habibi, M. S., Apea, V., Boesecke, C., Vandekerckhove, L., Yakubovsky, M., Sendagorta, E., Blanco, J. L., Florence, E., Moschese, D., Maltez, F. M., Goorhuis, A., Pourcher, V., Migaud, P., Noe, S., Pintado, C., Maggi, F., Hansen, A.-E., Hoffmann, C., Lezama, J. I., Mussini, C., Cattelan, A., Makofane, K., Tan, D., Nozza, S., Nemeth, J., Klein, M. B., Orkin, C. M. & SHARE-net Clinical Group (2022). Monkeypox Virus Infection in Humans across 16 Countries - April-June 2022. The New England journal of medicine, vol. 387, p. 679-691.
- Ali, K., Azher, T., Baqi, M., Binnie, A., Borgia, S., Carrier, F. M., Cavayas, Y. A., Chagnon, N., Cheng, M. P., Conly, J., Costiniuk, C., Daley, P., Daneman, N., Douglas, J., Downey, C., Duan, E., Duceppe, E., Durand, M., English, S., Farjou, G., Fera, E., Fontela, P., Fowler, R., Fralick, M., Geagea, A., Grant, J., Harrison, L. B., Havey, T., Hoang, H., Kelly, L. E., Keynan, Y., Khwaja, K., Klein, G., Klein, M., Kolan, C., Kronfli, N., Lamontagne, F., Lau, R., Fralick, M., Lee, T. C., Lee, N., Lim, R., Longo, S., Lostun, A., MacIntyre, E., Malhamé, I., Mangof, K., McGuinty, M., Mergler, S., Munan, M. P., Murthy, S., O'Neil, C., Ovakim, D., Papenburg, J., Parhar, K., Parvathy, S. N., Patel, C., Perez-Patrigeon, S., Pinto, R., Rajakumaran, S., Rishu, A., Roba-Oshin, M., Rushton, M., Saleem, M., Salvadori, M., Scherr, K., Schwartz, K., Semret, M., Silverman, M., Singh, A., Sligl, W., Smith, S., Somayaji, R., Tan, D. H. S., Tobin, S., Todd, M., Tran, T.-V., Tremblay, A., Tsang, J., Turgeon, A., Vakil, E., Weatherald, J., Yansouni, C., Zarychanski, R., Canadian Treatments for COVID-19 (CATCO) & Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada (AMMI) Clinical Research Network and the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group (2022). Remdesivir for the treatment of patients in hospital with COVID-19 in Canada: a randomized controlled trial. CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne, vol. 194, p. E242-E251.
- Yansouni, C. P., Papenburg, J., Cheng, M. P., Corsini, R., Caya, C., Vasquez Camargo, F., Harrison, L. B., Zaharatos, G., Büscher, P., Faye, B., Ndiaye, M., Matlashewski, G. & Ndao, M. (2022). Specificity of SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Detection Assays against S and N Proteins among Pre-COVID-19 Sera from Patients with Protozoan and Helminth Parasitic Infections. Journal of clinical microbiology, vol. 60, p. e0171721.
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