Investigating the ecological states of phage communities and their effect on host-associated microbiomes

Bacteriophages (or phages) are viruses that infect and kill bacteria. They are very efficient and highly specific therefore can actively regulate the composition and abundance of the microbiome. However, the life cycle(s) (lytic or lysogenic) that they follow is determined by many different factors Including their genetics, the abundance of their target bacteria, the competition or collaboration with other phages, and in general the state of the microbial communities that they are embedded in. Our aim is to study the ecological and evolution parameters that affect the state of phage communities in the human body and mathematically express them. To achieve this, the student will be trained on viromics and metagenomics along with phage-bacteria isolation and characterisation pipelines. In collaboration with principal investigators from the research areas of Applied mathematics and population genetics the empirical data will be used to built mathematical models of phage-bacteria interactions at the system level. Finally, the candidate will use our state-of-the-art artificial microbial communities to test and further develop the models using experimental data.