Research interests
Bacteria and their viruses, known as bacteriophages, have co-evolved for millions of years. As a result of their co-evolution, microbes developed multiples lines of defence to withstand the predatory attacks of phages, and phages responded with multiple forms to overcome these barriers. Microbial defence systems such as restriction-modification (RM), abortive infection (Abi), and CRISPR-Cas have been known for years, but the field has recently bloomed with the discovery of tens of completely novel defence systems that microbes encode to protect from phage predation. With the realization that the arsenal of microbial defences is much more diverse than previously perceived, came exciting new questions.
Furthermore, the discovery of new defence systems in microbes suggests that phages also carry anti-defence systems to help them overcome these prokaryotic barriers. This may help reconcile the number of proteins of unknown function in phage genomes that have been found to be dispensable for infection of permissible hosts.
The microbial interactions lab
PhD supervision:
Dr. Franklin Nobrega
Dr. Bas E. Dutilh
PhD research title
Investigating prokaryotic defence and bacteriophage anti-defence systems
PhD Funding
Research Studentship from the Faculty of Environmental & Life Sciences – School of Biological Sciences
Research group
Microbiology
Affiliate research group
Institute for Life Sciences (IfLS)
Pauline Annemarie Caroline van HaastrechtSchool of Biological Sciences
Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences
Life Sciences Building 85
University of Southampton
Highfield Campus
Southampton
SO17 1BJ
