Klebsiella, phages and the capsule: what's going on?

With the looming antimicrobial resistance crisis, bacteriophages are increasingly investigated as a potential alternative to antibiotics, but the way they mechanisticly interact with bacteria is poorly understood for many systems. This project will focus on the interaction between phages, the Klebsiella capsule and biofilm formation, using transposon-directed insertion sequencing (TraDIS) and advanced biofilm models.
In this microbiology project a variety of techniques in molecular microbiology, sequence data analysis and fluorescence microscopy will be used to understand how phage infection drives Klebsiella capsule variation and how that affects virulence and biofilm formation.