The health of an ecosystem, including single organisms such as a plant or human, is dependent upon the composition of the microbiome. The microbiome consists primarily of bacteria, archaea, protists and fungi as well as the viruses that infect them. When a pathogenic bacteria enters an ecosystem, the complexity of the microbiome is often greatly reduced, impacting the ecosystem health.
The most abundant cellular organisms on the planet are bacteria (estimated at 10^30) with the viruses or "phages" that infect them estimated at 10^32. Due to their sheer numbers as well as the ability to infect and kill their host as well as transfer DNA, phages are a main contributor to bacterial evolution. Our lab specializes in the study of Bacterial Hosts and the Phages that infect them (BHAP). We seek to solve bacterial diseases while investigating the evolution of bacterial pathogens through the study of the phages that infect them.