PhD Opportunity – Understanding virus-virus interactions: from cells to populations

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Background and aims: Respiratory viral infections, including seasonal epidemics and pandemics, cause a major disease burden. Multiple viruses can cause respiratory infections, including influenza viruses, coronaviruses, respiratory syncytial virus, rhinoviruses, human metapneumovirus and parainfluenza viruses, to name but a few. Historically, respiratory viruses have been studied in isolation using a one-virus–one-disease approach. Our laboratory carries out a broad research programme that studies the biology of respiratory viruses using a multi-virus and multi-scale approach (i.e. from cells to populations). In published studies, we combined epidemiological and modelling approaches to reveal the existence of positive and negative interactions between respiratory viruses at the epidemiological scale (1). Using experimental approaches, we showed that interferon responses mediate negative interactions in the human respiratory tract (2, 3). At the cellular level, we were the first to show that virus coinfections can generate infectious hybrid particles (4). Our overarching aim is to determine the processes that drive interactions among respiratory viruses at the population, within-host, and cellular levels.

Techniques to be used: Our group offers a truly multidisciplinary research environment. PhD projects align with the group’s overarching research aim and are designed around the students’ training needs. Wet lab projects include cell culture, classical virology, immunostaining, microscopy, and imaging (2-4) as well as serological assays (5, 6). Dry projects combine epidemiology (7, 8), evolutionary biology, bioinformatics (9) and modelling (1, 10).

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