Sean finished his masters project on characterizing the specificity of natural phages from the horse chestnut phyllosphere and has now begun his doctoral work. For his first project, Sean will be examining the costs associated with bacterial resistance to phages in their natural habitats.
There is good evidence that resisting parasites is costly, but most of this evidence comes from tests in the lab (e.g. our recent paper on resisting multiple phages: here). Sean is taking this a step further to determine what these costs might look like in terms of the bacteria’s ability to infect its plants hosts. Stay tuned for some great results!
Koskella Lab at UC Berkeley 