Merrikh was born in
Iran and fled the country during the
Iran-Iraq War, she was raised in
Turkey.[2] At age 16, she was sent to
Texas to continue her education.[2] She naturalized as a citizen of the United States in 2003.[5] After attending community college in Texas, she enrolled at the
University of Houston and later
Boston University.[6]
In 2009, she was appointed Assistant Professor of Microbiology in the Department of Health and Sciences at the
University of Washington.[8] In 2015, she discovered a bacterial protein called
Mutation Frequency Decline (Mfd) quickens the bacterial mutation process.[9] In January 2019, she was appointed full Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at Vanderbilt University.
Her work researches ways to slow the rate of bacterial mutations and to block their evolution.[10][11] In 2017, she led the research group to help bacteria survive hostile environments and resist antibiotics, done through disrupting
DNA replication in order to boost the rate of
gene mutations.[12]
Honors and awards
Merrikh is one of the recipients of the 2013 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Awards,[13] for investigating the impact of replication-transcription conflicts on
bacterial evolution. She received the
Vilcek Foundation, 2016 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science,[6][14] and the University of Washington Innovation Award in 2015[15] for her research on the impact of replication-transcription conflicts on
antibiotic resistance development....
Publications
Her most cited publications after the award of her doctorate are, according to
Google Scholar:[16]
^"It's In the Genes w/ Houra Merrikh". Everything You Know Is Wrong. Archived from
the original on October 22, 2019. Retrieved October 22, 2019. Her research into the mutagenic nature of co-directional gene collisions were revolutionary in the field and won her the 2016 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science.