Lukehard studied biology at Revelle College in the University of California, San Diego, here she was first introduced to microbiology, and focused on Bacillus subtilis.
[1] Lukehart joined the laboratory of King K. Holmes at the University of Washington in 1980, where she worked on sexually-transmitted diseases.
Treponema pallidum is a complicated bacterium to grow; it is propagated by passage in rabbits and it has a very fragile surface structure.
Lukehart identified that there was variation in the surface antigen of Treponema pallidum that could explain how it evades immune response and caused clinical infection.
[1] She studied the development of macrolide resistance in strains of Treponema pallidum, and showed that the bacterium frequently invaded the central nervous system in the early days of HIV.