- University of Exeter
- UK
Cyanobacteria and their viruses
I am carrying out a post doc at the University of Exeter looking at lipid synthesis in cyanobacteria. I am involved in the molecular side of this work.
I did my PhD through the University of Warwick, but I was based at Plymouth Marine Laboratory. My PhD work was jointly supervised by Martin Muhling, Ian Joint and Nick Mann. At the start of my PhD I undertook sample collection on-board an AMT cruise. The remainder of my PhD has been laboratory based, involving the culture of cyanobacteria and molecular analysis of DNA samples from the AMT cruise.
My PhD has focused on the marine cyanobacteria Prochlorococcus, which is the most abundant marine photoautotroph. I have developed molecular probes for the study of the Prochlorococcus diversity. These probes were applied to environmental samples from the Atlantic Ocean. In addition to this I have also assessed the genetic diversity of myoviruses that infect Prochlorococcus, through the application of molecular probes. The aim of this work is to assess the affects of viruses on their host populations.
I have also carried out phage isolation assays. This led to the successful isolation of phage that infect Prochlorococcus, from the Atlantic Ocean. This in turn was very interesting and opened up a whole new expanse of characterisation work, which was impossible to finish within the confines of a PhD.