The best findings all start somewhere…
Check out our projects!
Investigating:
Cyanophage
These projects examine cyanophage-cyanobacteria phage-host interactions to identify key impacts in virulence within cyanobacterial systems. Projects centre around finding new phage and examining host ranges.
Investigating:
Phage tRNAs
These projects examine bacteriophage-bacterial interaction systems, surrounding the use of and evolutionary selection for bacteriophage tRNAs. They primarily focus on understanding why bacteriophage encode for tRNAs, and how tRNAs impact bacteriophage host range and bacteriophage virulence. Further routes of investigation will include examining if there is evidence of co-evolution of bacterial hosts and bacteriophage, with respect to observed differences in tRNAs in the host and bacteriophage genomes. Another route of investigation will be to examine if bacteriophage tRNAs and bacterial codons are coding for the same or different tRNAs, and if so, which ones. Work is done in E. coli, M. smegmatis, and K. quasipneumoniae.
Cyanobacterial Natural Products
Investigating:
Many of the sunscreen filters that we currently use can be toxic for us and the environment. An alternative to these filters could be mycosporine-like amino acids (MAAs), which are small molecules produced by different kinds of organisms to protect themselves from sun damage by absorbing UV radiation. I will be working in the production of MAAs in cyanobacteria and my approach will be to develop cultivation strategies for cyanobacteria to evolve and produce novel MAAs or known MAAs with increased yields.