ANANTHARAMAN

We are developing bioinformatics approaches and tools to study uncultivated viruses, with a specific focus on bacteriophages (phages). Through our open access software and tools, we hope to enable and drive microbial and viral ecology studies in the future... Recent advances in DNA sequencing and bioinformatics approaches have enabled the recovery of thousands of strain-resolved microbial genomes from a single ecosystem thereby providing a window into fine scale microbial interactions and metabolic networks in complex communities. Broadly, we are interested in studying three types of interactions in microbial communities using sulfur transformations as a model - virus-microbe, microbe-microbe, and microbial "metabolic handoffs". We focus on virus-microbe interactions involving "auxiliary metabolic genes", which are host-derived genes utilized by viruses in selfishly altering microbial metabolism. We also study microbe-microbe interactions, and "metabolic handoffs" primarily focused on..

Primary location: Madison United States