Organisms of the gut-invasive genus Helicobacter, such as H. felis shown, have long been a hallmark of BABS research and are the present focus of Professor Hazel Mitchell.
Genetic Heterogeneity of Natural Marine Microbial Population
Most studies of microbial function deal with clonal strains that have been cultured and studied in the laboratory. However it has been recently recognised that bacterial strains in nature are far from being clonal, but instead form populations of closely-related yet genetically distinct individuals. This population heterogeneity is predicted to cause functional differences as individuals of the population might carry different mutations in functional genes.
Up to now these difference could only be observed in a handful of conserved genes, but recent high-throughput sequencing of natural populations has made it possible to measure variation in every gene within the genome. We have recently generated datasets that contain hundreds of millions of basepairs of natural microbial populations associated with marine surfaces.
This project will apply bioinformatic tools to define the population heterogeneity both in terms of distribution (e.g. hot spots) and type (e.g. SNPs), determine if particular gene variants are being selected for and hence being important for the evolution of the population, and finally, predict what type of physiological advantage particular mutations might have and what this means for the selective pressure in the environment.
BABS personnel that are responsible for this project