He Reeves lab work on bacterial pathogenesis and evolution.
The species chosen for all of the work include pathogenic forms. All are important pathogens, but all are also very convenient for studying evolution as they include non-pathogenic forms. There are also good collections of strains available and usually a lot of data on diversity because of serotyping etc., both very helpful for sorting out the relationships of strains and the steps involved in development of pathogenicity for example
Recent publications have looked at the relationships of the major pathogenic clones of V. cholerae, the genetic basis of the 90 different capsules on the surface of Streptococcus pneumoniae and the overall population structure of E. coli, which gave insights into the origins of the different pathogenic forms.
Projects in the lab usually cover a particular aspect of a species or group of related species, and most involve a mix of lab work and DNA sequence
