Project Reference: TRG27-ENG-SB2

Project title: Viral Competition within a Collapsing Host

Project outline

The outcome of viral infection depends not only on the virus, but also on the physiological state of the cell it infects. When multiple viruses encounter the same host, this dependence becomes even more complex: they may compete for limited cellular resources, interfere with one another, or in some circumstances benefit from the changes caused by a co-infecting virus. Understanding when these interactions become competitive or cooperative is important for both viral ecology and the rational design of phage combinations.

Using bacteriophages as an experimentally tractable system, this project will investigate how the physiological state of a bacterial host, and its progressive collapse during infection, shapes interactions between co-infecting viruses. The student will combine single-cell microscopy and microfluidics with mathematical and computational modelling to follow infection timing, viral gene expression, host physiological changes and infection outcomes in individual cells.

The project will determine how host state, infection order, resource availability and differences in viral strategy alter whether phages compete, coexist or facilitate one another. Models will connect these within-cell interactions to population-level ecology, asking how host density, physiology and the frequency of co-infection change the success of different phage combinations. Initially, the evolutionary consequences will be explored computationally to predict which interaction strategies are favoured in different environments; later, experimental evolution will test these predictions directly.

By revealing how host physiology changes the rules of viral interaction, the project aims to connect events inside single infected cells with phage ecology and evolution. Ultimately, identifying when phages interfere with or complement one another could provide principles for designing more effective and predictable phage combinations for therapy.

Principal Supervisor

Professor Somenath Bakshi

Email address: sb2330@cam.ac.uk

Department / Partner Institute: Engineering

Website: https://www.bakshilab.net/

BBSRC strategic theme

Understanding the rules of life