Social behaviour of Staphylococcus aureus cells causing infection in human hosts

This project will bring together expertise in social evolution and bacterial population genetics to provide insight into patterns of behaviour observed in a human pathogen – Staphylococcus aureus. The student will be well-supported in an existing team of researchers supported by ERC funding to investigate social evolution of bacterial infections.

Aims:
• To use social evolutionary theory to understand behaviour in a natural population of pathogenic bacteria.
• To explore clinical implications of social dynamics in an important human pathogen

Micro-organisms were believed until recently to live independent, unicellular lives but are now understood to rely on complex systems of social behaviours for survival. In pathogenic bacteria, cooperation and communication between cells leads to increased virulence and the understanding of how these behaviours evolve is of fundamental importance to the future of human health. Almost nothing is known, however, about social behaviours of bacteria infecting human hosts, and research on social behaviour in microbes is limited to well-characterised lab strains. This proposal describes a programme of research designed to exploit the opportunities offered by an interdisciplinary approach to address the growing challenge posed to human health by disease caused by bacterial infection.

Traits of special interest include antibiotic resistance, quorum sensing, bacteriocins that are used as chemical warfare to mediated competition and restriction modification systems that mediate horizontal gene transfer. The student will have access to an extensive isolate collection, and genome sequences of these isolates, as required to complete a project of this scope. The project will involve a combination of lab work and bioinformatics; and the student will have the opportunity to gain expertise across fields of research - social evolution, population genetics and microbiology.

Supervision:
Ashleigh Griffin is an expert in social evolutionary biology with a focus on understanding behaviour in nature through experimental evolution with microbes, primarily Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and comparative analyses of cooperative breeding in birds.

Recent relevant papers:
Andersen, S, RL Marvig, S Molin, H Krogh Johansen, AS Griffin (2015) Long-term social dynamics drive loss of function in pathogenic bacteria. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 112, 10756-10761.
Ghoul, M, SA West, FA McCorkell, Z Lee, JB Bruce, AS Griffin (2016) Pyoverdin cheats fail to invade bacterial populations in stationary phase. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 9, 1728-1736.

Danny Wilson is a researcher in microbial genomics, with a particular interest in the evolution of bacterial pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus and the genetic basis of natural variation in key traits including virulence and antimicrobial resistance.

Recent relevant papers:
Young, B.C., et al (2017) Severe infections emerge from the microbiome by adaptive evolution. Biorxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/116681
Laabei, M., et al. (2015)
Evolutionary trade-offs underlie the multi-faceted virulence of Staphylococcus aureus.
PLoS Biology 13: e1002229.

If you would like to apply please submit an application for a DPhil in Zoology stating Studentship Ref No: GRIF01. Application procedure details at: https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/dphil-zoology?wssl=1 . Please note: instead of a research proposal please submit a personal statement.