PhD position: Unravelling the novel bacteriophage diversity in tropical rain forests

Bacteriophages often carry auxiliary metabolic genes that are used by the phage to augment host metabolism to maximise phage replication. These genes often overcome metabolic bottlenecks encountered by their bacterial hosts and point towards the most important limiting factor in an ecosystem. Amazingly they have not been examined in the rainforest and such genes may be of key importance to understand ecosystem function from a bottom up perspective.

This project will use both culture-based and culture-independent methods to study bacteriophages from Belum rainforest and from the Amazon that are associated with hallmark plant species. The project will specifically investigate the viral communities in soil surrounding different plant species.